Some characteristics of mental maps: an empirical study

This paper reports on a mental mapping exercise on Durham city undertaken by three population samples- residents, visitors and summer tourists. A classification of map styles by Appleyard is applied and amended; map complexity is strongly related to sex, class and familiarity with the city. Tendency to 'good figure' also shows a positive correlation with these variables. Nearly two-thirds of the maps adopt a non-conventional orientation, for which the direction from which the city was most often approached is offered in explanation. THE term mental map is often used as one of several synonyms which refer to the cognitive or mental image of an environment held by an individual or group. It is preferable, however, to restrict the use of the term to the spatial or skeletal framework-the background to the more rounded phenomenon of the image. Parts of the image are clearly aspatial, defying allocation by spatial co-ordinate, but, equally clearly, it is logical to assume that the environment as an entity only properly or fully makes sense when the separate parts are mentally structured in some se- quential or relational context. It is that part of the respondent's data store relating to locational characteristics which is tapped in a mental mapping exercise. This is not to imply the existence of one inviolate composite map somewhere in the respondent's mind. In that the exercise is comprehensive and demanding, it is possible that respondents will be challenged to rationalize a situation which previously had lain in a dormant, even subliminal state. Indeed, it is probable that some material will be 'knitted' together for the first time. More correctly, therefore, it is the latent or potential map that is elicited by the lengthy introspection and overview required of such exercises. Recognition of this point may obviate criticism of the validity of mental maps.