Cognitive Aspects: How People Perceive, Memorize, Think and Talk About Landmarks - Landmarks: GIScience for Intelligent Services - page 75

3.3.3 What We Have Learned About Landmarks from Mental

Spatial Representations

In summary, landmarks appear to have a number of functions in mental spatial
representations. They form anchor points in these representations, spanning a spatial
reference frame for further information stored. As such each landmark anchors a
distinct region. Landmarks in mental spatial representations are graded by their
embodied or mediated experience, which may stem from their varying salient prop-
erties, or alternatively from the frequency of exposure, or type of activity of a person
in the environment. However, there is no systematic research evidence available
to date on cognitive salience. In addition the objects forming landmarks belong
to categories of different spatial granularity. As we have seen, the hierarchical
structure of configurations of landmarks in mental spatial representations provides
for efficient heuristics in spatial reasoning, accepting even distortions in spatial
reasoning. Other distortions arise between differently graded landmarks, or by the
local density of landmarks—the amount of objects in between [ 83 ] .
Besides organizing information about space, many landmarks appear to form the
bridge between mental visual imagery and mental spatial representations since they
have both properties, visual imagery and spatial anchor. In this dimension one might
identify a third hierarchy, one of visual detail.
Finally, use of the mental spatial representation is highly context-sensitive. Only
portions relevant are activated for working memory.

3.4 Externalization of Mental Spatial Representations

Cognitive scientists also study externalizations of mental spatial representations,
or the ways how people communicate about space via an external medium.
Communication covers spoken or written language, but it includes also drawing
(from sketches to maps) and gesturing. Each of these modes gives clues of mental
spatial representations and abilities, and in each of these modes we will encounter
landmarks as a central concept. However, each of these modes also involves
conscious (System 2) processes, and this fact lays another filter between the mental
spatial representation and the observer.
As mental representations and language are seen as correlated in gen-
eral [ 93 , 168 ] , language and space can be expected to be correlated as well. The
ability to coordinate, and hence, communicate about locations and directions must
be one of the most ingrained language abilities, as some explain by pointing to
foraging and escaping [ 242 ] . Also, experience of space is fundamental for a body
and its movement, and learned early (see Sect. 3.3.2.1 ) . Hence it is no surprise that
spatial language terms are mapped to other domains in metaphors [ 108 , 112 ] .
Despite a universal experience of the body in space, Levinson [ 120 ] explains
that human spatial thinking is heavily influenced by culture. Different cultures can