It has been documented that when memorizing a physical space, the person's mental representation of that space is biased with distortion and segmentation. Two experiments reported here suggest that distortion and segmentation arise due to a hierarchical organization of the spatial representation. The spatial relations associated with salient landmarks are more strongly encoded and easier to rec...

The current theories on episodic memory suggest a crucial role of spatial processing for an effective retrieval. For a successful episodic recall, the long-term allocentric scene has to be translated into an egocentric scene. Here, we argue that a crucial role for an episodic retrieval is played by a "mental frame syncing" between two kinds of allocentric representations. This neurocognitive pr...

This paper presents a computational cognitive model of the construction process of complex, i.e., multi-part, visual mental images. The model is integrated into the cognitive architecture Casimir. The construction process is realized by the interplay of a spatial working memory structure and a passive quasi-pictorial visual representation. Both structures are successively build up on demand fro...

Interactions between number and space, exemplified by the SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes) effect, are often taken as evidence for a privileged spatial representation of number. Naturally, research on the spatial representation of number has typically focused on spatial tasks. But in order to make inferences about numerical cognition more generally, one must take care to ...

Several psychophysical investigations, expanding the classical introspective observations by Galton, have suggested that the mental representation of numbers takes the form of a number line along which magnitude is positioned in ascending order according to reading habits, i.e. from left to right in Western cultures. In keeping with the evidence, pathological rightward deviations in the bisecti...

We present a computational model of mental rotation and shape comparison. The model posits that spatial abstraction, in which spatial details are removed to simplify a representation, is a key skill underlying spatial ability. Shapes are represented as collections of two-dimensional parts, and abstraction is applied by merging parts or ignoring certain part features. Using the model, we simulat...

Numbers are often proposed to be represented spatially as lying along a mental number line. The present study examined whether the direction of spatial attention operates similarly in physical and numerical space. Participants bisected physical lines by indicating the perceived center and "bisected" the mental number line by estimating (without calculating) the number midway between two others....

Spatial perspective taking is the ability to reason about spatial relations relative to another's viewpoint. Here, we propose a mechanistic hypothesis that relates mental representations of one's viewpoint to the transformations used for spatial perspective taking. We test this hypothesis using a novel behavioral paradigm that assays patterns of response time and variation in those patterns acr...

This paper explores the possibility of organizing map design around conceptual spatial representations (CSRs). CSR refers to a mental representation that is instantiated in interaction with a spatial environment, a spatial representational medium, and/or while solving spatial problems. For this approach we coin the term cognitive conceptual. We detail the basic assumptions in a contrastive mann...