Mental Models & Spatial Cognition

We acquire spatial knowledge through driving and walking, but also through secondary sources such as maps and descriptions. In all of these cases, the task we can expect to have to perform later is a spatial one: navigating, reorganizing, integrating, or figuring out spatial relations. Given this, it's almost always optimal to organize memory spatially, regardless of the organization of the input. In a perceptual situation, processing priority should be given to the aspects of the scene that one interacts with most, or for which survival depends on rapid reaction to change.

A series of studies in our lab examined how space around oneself is organized. From that work, we found that mental models derived from text resemble representations of perceptually experienced space. In both cases, people construct egocentric spatial frameworks for creating, manipulating, and searching memory representations of spaces and the objects in them. Space is organized in part according to a three-dimensional framework of up/down, front/back, and right/left, with the observer at the origin. The relative perceptual salience, behavioral significance, and physical asymmetries of both the body and the world predict the relative prioritization of the directions, which is reflected in retrieval time, memory gradients for precise location, and relative conceptual sizes of spatial regions. Variants of the spatial framework for reclining observers and for observers looking in on, rather than embedded in, the scene can predict performance for those spatial situations.

Other work in collaboration with G.A. Radvansky, Rolf Zwaan, and Todd Federico examined how people represent situation models that are either compatible or incompatible in terms of their implied location and timing. Actions that can occur together are integrated in memory, while actions that cannot are maintained in separate representations.

Relevant Papers

Franklin, N., & Tversky, B. (1990). Searching imagined environments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 119, 63-76.

Bryant, D. J., Tversky, B., & Franklin, N. (1992). Internal and external spatial frameworks for representing described scenes. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 74-98.

Franklin, N. (1992). Spatial representation for described environments. Geoforum, 23, 165-174.

Franklin, N., Tversky, B, & Coon, V. (1992). Switching points of view in spatial mental models. Memory & Cognition, 20, 507-518.

Tversky, B., Franklin, N., Taylor, H. A., & Bryant, D. J. (1994). Spatial mental models from descriptions. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 45, 656-668.

Franklin, N., Henkel, L. A., & Zangas, T. (1995). Parsing surrounding space into regions. Memory & Cognition, 23, 397-407.

Franklin, N. (1996). Language as a means of constructing and conveying cognitive maps. In J. Portugali (Ed.), The construction of cognitive maps. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 275-295.

Franklin, N., & Federico, T. (1997). Representing described spatial and temporal situations in memory. In Proceedings, AAAI-97, Workshop on Language and Space. Providence, RI. pp. 14-26.

Radvansky, G. A., Zwaan, R., Federico, T., & Franklin, N. (1998). Retrieval from temporally organized situation models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 24, 1224-1237.

Federico, T., & Franklin, N. (1998). Medium of input and long-term representations of space. In Proceedings, Conference on Spatial Information Theory. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Tversky, B., Morrison, J. B., Franklin, N., & Bryant, D. J. (1999). Three spaces of spatial cognition. Professional Geographer, 51, 516-524.

Federico, T., & Franklin, N. (2002). Organization of temporal situations. In K. R. Coventry and P. Olivier (Eds.), Spatial language: Cognitive and computational perspectives. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Dordrecht: The Netherlands. pp. 103-120.