Cognitive Aspects: How People Perceive, Memorize, Think and Talk About Landmarks - Landmarks: GIScience for Intelligent Services - page 58

(or event) categories. Hence, the findings cannot be compared or averaged. For
example, the literature is typically focusing on urban environments and wayfinding
by walkers, which explains the prominence of object categories such as buildings or
streets. In such a context, objects (or events) at this level of spatial granularity allow
to anchor the decisions of a person with low ambiguity: “At the corner store turn
left” works well, while “on [the hill] Montmarte turn left” does not.
Hence, the guideline for object or event categories being perceived or used as
landmarks is actually the current context, or focus of the observer. The attention and
intention of the observer regulates the affordance of objects.

3.2.3 What We Have Learned About Landmarks

from Perception

Landmarks are the attention-grabbing objects in the environment. The experience,
either first-hand or mediated, of these objects is stored in mental spatial representa-
tions anchoring the location because of its memorizable sensation. Since attention
is context-dependent, also what is attention-grabbing is context-dependent.

3.3 Mental Spatial Representations

Generally, perceptions of any sort can lead to memorizable events (“the desert today
was superb”). Memory, or a mental representation , stores primarily the properties
of the experience. Landmark experience, however, is different. Objects or events
are perceived as landmarks in relationship to their location. Thus, a mental spatial
representation stores the experience together with its location. Furthermore, since
the object or event was perceived in the context of moving in the environment,
location is in the first instance related to the pose and heading of the ego, in a
second instance related to what has been experienced before (the own trajectory),
and thirdly to the larger knowledge acquired so far about the environment. This
means, location is stored primarily in relation to other (known) objects or events.
This section approaches landmarks in mental spatial representations from two
angles, brain and mind. While brain is frequently associated with matter, and mind
with cognitive abilities, consciousness and personality, the distinction is not clear
cut. Neuroscience explains gray matter by function as well, and, as mentioned
before already, cognitive abilities are not necessarily all conscious. However, the
observational approaches of the sciences are orthogonal. Neuroscience studies the
brain from the perspective of cells and synapses, enzymes, and receptors at micro-
level, and roles and activities in brain regions at macro-level. It applies invasive and
non-invasive methods, both stationary due to limitations by technical equipment.
Cognitive science, in contrast, studies cognitive capacities through observing people
(or animals) behaving in situ or in response to external stimulation.