Both resources in the natural environment and concepts in a semantic space are distributed “patchily”, with large gaps in between the patches. To describe people’s internal and external foraging behavior, various random walk models have been proposed. In particular, internal foraging has been modeled as sampling: in order to gather relevant information for making a decision, people draw samples...

Previous studies have provided evidence of multi-level mental representations of language-conveyed spatial (scenic) information. However, the available evidence is largely inconclusive with regard to the structure of these mental representations. A laboratory experiment assesses computer-assisted problem-solving performance abilities when language-conveyed representations of spatial information...

This paper reviews a class of cognitive representations collectively known as mental models. These representations purport to integrate certain aspects of propositional and imagistic theories of knowledge representation while enabling more detailed theories of human cognitive behavior. This paper explores the nature of mental models by considering basic philosophical issues including ontology a...

The dual nature of touch has long been understood. The sense of touch seems to carry information at the same time about the external object touching our skin, and also about our body itself. However, how these two interact has remained obscure. We present an analytic model of how tactile information interacts with mental body representations in the brain. Four such interactions are described: t...

In order to develop artificial agents operating in complex ever-changing environments, advanced technical memory systems are required. At this juncture, two central questions are which information needs to be stored and how it is represented. On the other hand, cognitive psychology provides methods to measure the structure of mental representations in humans. But the nature and the characterist...

Urban monuments encompass a wide range of architectural works either intentionally or unintentionally. These works are often salient due to their inherently explicit or hidden components and qualities in the urban context. Therefore, they affect the mental-spatial representations of the environment and make the city legible. However, the ambiguity of effective components often complicates their...

A substantial amount of work in cognitive psychology concerns the question how many kinds of mental representations there are and how many representations are required, with answers ranging from zero (e.g. Brooks, 1991) to unlimited (e.g. Sloman, 1985). In the imagery debate, a controversy arose over the question whether mental representations have a propositional format (Pylyshyn, 1973), a pic...