Cognitive Aspects: How People Perceive, Memorize, Think and Talk About Landmarks - Landmarks: GIScience for Intelligent Services - page 47

representations [ 89 ] . Also the degree of detail in maps has an impact, as more
abstract representations support the construction of a mental spatial representation
better than, say, satellite imagery [ 162 , 186 ] .
Spatial orientation comes interlinked with locomotion (as spatial updating),
utilizing the sensorimotor system, but also comes interlinked with wayfinding out
of cognitive, sometimes even conscious effort. Thus spatial orientation involves also
a bundle of spatial abilities. While spatial orientation may focus more on the basic
ability of imagery, wayfinding may focus more on the basic ability of planning.
Spatial orientation is the ability to create or maintain an image from sensory
perceptions of the position of the body relative to the environment.
Maintaining the spatial orientation of the body to the outside world is a crucial
condition for wayfinding and locomotion. Gärling et al. [ 62 ] differentiate several
levels of orientation functions:
We define environmental orientation as the ability to perceive one's position relative to
points or systems of reference in the environment. These points or systems of reference
may be perceptually available, but, [...]thisisnot anecessary condition. [...]Ahierarchy
of orientation functions may be tentatively proposed. Body orientation is defined as the
perception of the body axes relative to the line of gravity and the limbs relative to
the body axes. At the next level, orientation is maintained in the environment relative
to perceptually available reference systems. Visual direction and position constancy as
well as auditory localization are important here. At the highest level of the hierarchy,
orientation is maintained relative to points and systems of reference that may not be
perceptually available. Geographic orientation could be considered a special case. Other
indirect information sources, such as maps, signs, and the sun, are available (p. 165).
The sensorimotor component of this task is controlled by the nervous system. The
immediate orientation of the body is observed by the visual and auditory senses,
head orientation and motion is registered by the vestibular (equilibrium) organ,
and an awareness of the position of the parts of the body and their movements
is maintained by the proprioceptive sense. An integration of these sensory inputs
allows for coordinated actions of the body, for example, tracking targets, or
controlling of posture, gait and other movements.
The cognitive component of this task requires a mental spatial representation of
the environment. Cognition is constantly trying to maintain a subjective sense of
orientation. This sense of orientation might be satisfied with the ability to locate
oneself in one's mental representation of the environment. This explanation would
be roughly equivalent to orientation of robots, establishing or maintaining a cor-
respondence between sensor observations and the robot's internal representation of
the world. For people, however, this definition is problematic since human sensing is
subjective and biased by attention. Furthermore, their mental spatial representation
is not directly accessible for observation, and neither are the individual's self-
localization in this representation, the correctness of the self-localization, or the