Large-Scale Representation: Some Characterizations and Educational Implications

How long has it been since you last mis placed your car in a large parking lot? Or had difficulty finding the elevators in an unfamiliar building after visiting an office? Or found your self lost in a new city even though you had a map? A growing number of urban planners, geographers, and psychologists claim that what these experiences have in common is the fact that knowing where you are requires some kind of large-scale spatial representation of your environ ment some kind of cognitive map, mental model, or spatial image of your surroundings. If your efforts to find your misplaced car, to locate the elevators, or to orient yourself in a new city are frustrated by an incomplete or inadequate repre sentation, imagine how frustrating incomplete or inadequate large-scale representations must be for children. Although the existence of large-scale spatial representations makes intuitive sense to most of us, we actually know very little about how such representations develop or are acquired, the de gree to which they are unique or general forms of thought, and the extent to which they serve as a frame of reference to other behavior. The study of such representations has evolved slowly be cause of the primitive state of theory and because we lack the methods and instruments for measur ing large-scale representation. A further compli cation is the fact that, as adults, we tend to be aware of our large-scale representations only when they are inadequate or when we are lost. It may be that we underrate the significance of such representations in our daily life because we are not necessarily conscious of our reliance upon them. It may be that large-scale representations