Modelling the Creation of Cognitive Maps

The ability to navigate successfully and find locations within a familiar environment requires that one possess a cognitive representation of that environment in addition to the information directly available to the perceptual system. The importance of cognitive representations, often referred to as cognitive maps, has long been recognized (Towbridge, 1913), but it was not until Lynch’s study of the Image of the City (1960) that psychologists and geographers began to study such representations with the tools of experimental psychology. Lynch asked residents of Boston and other cities to sketch maps to capture the most salient features of their city; such features included landmarks, local districts, roads, rivers and so forth. Lynch’s statistical analysis and theoretical statements were mostly qualitative, but highly provocative and stimulating to the emerging field of environmental psychology.