The contribution presents a computational modeling approach to geographic knowledge processing in mind. Geographic knowledge is assumed to be stored in a piecemeal manner. Spatial knowledge fragments form a hierarchical structure of lean knowledge. An actual mental image representation is constructed when needed to perform a specific task. In this construction process missing information is com...

People acquire spatial information from many sources, including maps, verbal descriptions, and navigating in the environment. The different sources present spatial information in different ways. For example, maps can show many spatial relations simultaneously, but in a description, each spatial relation must be presented sequentially. The present research investigated how these source differenc...

Humans have the ability to build and to inspect an internal visual image of an environment built from a verbal description. We used positron emission tomography (PET) to investigate the brain areas engaged in the mental scanning of a map that subjects built from the reading of a descriptive text. This task engaged a parieto-frontal network known to deal with spatial representations. Additional ...

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a specific learning disability that affects the acquisition of mathematical skills in children with normal intelligence and age-appropriate school education (prevalence 3-6%). One essential step in the development of mathematical understanding is the formation and automated access to a spatial representation of numbers. Many children with DD show a deficient de...

Is language linked to mental representations of space? There are several reasons to think that language and space might be separated in our cognitive systems, but they nevertheless interact in important ways. These interactions are evident in language viewed as a means of communication and in language considered a form of representation. In communication, spatial factors may be explicit in lang...

It is clear that humans have mental representations of their spatial environments and that these representations are useful, if not essential, in a wide variety of cognitive tasks such as identification of landmarks and objects, guiding actions and navigation and in directing spatial awareness and attention. Determining the properties of mental representation has long been a contentious issue (...

The asymmetric distribution of human spatial attention has been repeatedly documented in both patients and healthy controls. Biases in the distribution of attention and/or in the mental representation of space may also affect some aspects of language processing. We investigated whether biases in attention and/or mental representation of space affect semantic representations. In particular, we i...

0747-5632/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. A doi:10.1016/j.chb.2009.05.003 * Corresponding author. Address: Graduate Schoo tional Education, National Taiwan University of Scienc Keelung Road, Taipei 106, Taiwan, ROC. Tel.: +886 27376433. E-mail address: [email protected] (G.Y.-M. Kao Google Earth search function was used to study the impacts of small-scale spatial ability, large-scale en...

Cognitive mapping are mental pictures of the attributes of our surroundings. Cognitive maps provide us with a model or guide of our surroundings that we can utilize. When we make Cognitive maps, we regularly prevent data that is not significant or unrelated. This implies that our Cognitive maps can vary from the real environment that we are mapping. cognitive maps make it simpler for us to revi...