On early cognitive mapping

In this paper we examine the nature of the early cognitive map – the beginnings of a cognitive map formed from one’s early impressions of the environment one is in. Two distinct paradigms have emerged from our studies of what information is initially identified in a cognitive map. The first, which we term a space-based approach, emphasises making explicit the spatial extent of the current local environment. The second emphasises making explicit the relationships between objects in the local environment and we call this an object-based approach. For both paradigms we examine the psychological literature to find support for the approach and the roboticists’ attempts at implementing the idea. We argue that a space-based approach is the more appropriate way to compute an early cognitive map. In particular, we find that Siegel and White’s (1975) object-based hypothesis, which states that the developmental progression of a cognitive map is from landmark to route to survey map, is not supported. The space-based paradigm underpins our own work in this area and we outline our own spacebased theory for computing an early cognitive map.