Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Saint-Petersburg 2011
Table of contents
Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 3 Definition of Cognitive Mapping ............................................................................................................... 4 History and Use of the Term ..................................................................................................................... 4 The Process of Cognitive Mapping ............................................................................................................ 6 Different Types of Cognitive Map and Mapping Techniques .................................................................... 7 Cognitive mapping techniques .................................................................................................................. 8 Causal mapping. .................................................................................................................................... 8 Semantic mapping................................................................................................................................. 9 Concept mapping ................................................................................................................................10 Application of cognitive techniques and maps .......................................................................................11 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................................13
Introduction
All of us face misunderstandings and perception discrepancies, but what is the reason? The visual environment, natural objects and human actions are interpreted differently by different people. Information in our brain about thing, events and notions is organized in some structural schemes called cognitive maps. They help us to systemize knowledge and easily extract it in the process of analyzing and interpretation of new, unknown events or things. It is meaningful to study how to understand, visualize and organize our cognitive maps. So the theme of cognitive mapping deserves attention and thoroughly research.
Cognitive Mapping: Definitions, Examples, and Resources: http://intraspec.ca/cogmap.php; Downs R., Stea D. Cognitive Maps and Spatial Behavior: Process and Products; Tolman E. Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men// Classics in the History of Psychology;
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In city planning Kevin Lynch used sketch maps to reveal human knowledge of largescale complex environments.4 Geographers researched the nature of "mental maps" via revealed place preference, subjective distance and configurationally (layout) representation using non-metric
multidimensional scaling (MDS) and layout matching (spatial congruence) techniques. The methods used to assess spatial knowledge and examine how it is created have multiplied as researchers from anthropology, psychology, disability studies, artificial intelligence, computer science, and geography have explored assessment methods including pointing (for direction and orientation), interpoint distance examination (for spatial structure and layout and geometry), landmark learning, location/place hierarchies based on anchor point concepts, path integration (short-cutting and spatial updating), piloting (landmark navigation), chunking (route learning), "look-back strategies" (place fixing), verbalizing acquired knowledge (spatial linguistics) and other methods that use repeated behaviors to reveal and assess the spatial information contained in long-term memory ( in cognitive maps).
Figure1. Neil Cohn Cognitive Map of Graphic Signs (Emaki Productions: www.emaki.net)
Figure2. Food system without reduction of nitrogen (Ziervogel G. Toolkit for Vulnerability and
Adaptation Training)
Sandler J, Rosenblatt B. The concept of the representational world// The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child; Lazarus R., Folkman S. Stress, appraisal, and coping// New York: Springer
knowledge like: how fast can I move, I can count on the help of a friend if necessary, my husband will bring the children to school on Monday and Wednesday; an enormous amount of information about the environment that is used in automatic day-to-day functioning. It is difficult to appreciate how pervasive the use of these maps is; since automatic functioning is designed to liberate attention, most of its working is unconscious. But it is precisely when change occurs that these behavior patterns are being noticed. Everybody who has temporarily lost the use of a hand has become suddenly aware of the hundreds of things that cannot be executed normally or automatically. Simple actions, such as preparing or eating food, dressing or even sitting down, suddenly have to be monitored carefully for them to be carried out without accidents. This example may also serve to illustrate that introducing changes in cognitive structures will take considerable time, since cognitive maps form an extensive network, where the elements of the individuals environment and existing resources are included numerous times. If a resource disappears, all relevant acts and behaviors in which this resource is present have to be updated.
Samsonovich A., Ascoli G. Cognitive Map Dimensions of the Human Value System Extracted from Natural Language// Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications
Causal mapping is one of the most commonly used cognitive mapping techniques in investigating the cognition of decision makers in organizations. Causal mapping is derived from personal construct theory. This theory posits that an individual's set of perspectives is a system of personal constructs and individuals use their own personal constructs to understand and interpret events. In other words, an individual understands the environment with salient concepts (constructs), which can be expressed by either simple single-polar phrases or contextually rich bipolar phrases. An example of single-polar phrase is "good reader", while an example of bipolar phrase is "good computer skills - poor computer skills". As revealed by its name, a causal map represents a set of causal relationships among constructs within a belief system. Through capturing the cause effect relationships, insights into the reasoning of a particular person are acquired.
Swan J. Using cognitive mapping in management research: Decisions about technical innovation// British Journal of Management; 8 Fiol C., Huff A. Maps for managers: where are we? where do we go from here?// Journal of Management Studies
Figure4. Causal map (Manzoni J-F, Barsoux J-L. Are Your Subordinates Setting You Up to Fail?MIT Sloan
Management Review)
Semantic mapping
It must be pointed out that causal assertions are only part of an individual's total belief system. There are some cognitive mapping techniques that can be used to identify other relations among concepts. Semantic mapping, also known as idea mapping, is used to explore an idea without the constraints of a superimposed structure.9 To make a semantic map, one starts at the center of the paper with the main idea, and works outwards in all directions, producing a growing and organized structure composed of key words and key images. Around the main idea (a central word), five to ten ideas (child words) that are related to the central word are drawn. Each of these "child" words then serves as a subcentral word for the next level drawing. In other words, a semantic map has one main or central concept with tree-like branches.
Figure5. Semantic map showing osteoporosis knowledge (Hernandez-Rauda and Martinez-Garcia BMC
Musculoskeletal Disorders)
Concept mapping
Another popular cognitive mapping technique is called concept mapping. David Ausubel emphasized on the importance of prior knowledge in being able to learn about new concepts. Drawing on this theory, Novak concludes that existing cognitive structures are critical for learning new concepts. A concept map is a graphical representation where nodes represent concepts, and links represent the relationships between concepts. The links, with labels to represent the type of relationship between concepts, can be one-way, two-way, or non-directional. The concepts and the links may be categorized, and the concept map may show temporal or causal relationships between concepts. Concept mapping is useful in generating ideas, designing a complex structure, communicating complex ideas, aiding learning by explicitly integrating new and old knowledge, as well as assessing understanding or diagnosing misunderstanding10
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Jonassen D., Beissner K., Yacci M. Structural knowledge: Techniques for conveying, assessing, and acquiring structural knowledge// Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; Novak J. How do we learn our lesson?// The Science Teacher
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All cognitive mapping techniques reveal concepts that people hold to be important but they vary in terms of the nature of the relationships among concepts that they identify. Some only look at simple categories whilst others aim to reveal deeper underlying arguments. At the surface level, techniques such as content analysis identify key concepts by looking at how frequently particular words are used in written or verbal statements. At a deeper level, techniques such as the repertory grid technique can be used to identify both the content and the structure of an individual's personal frame of reference. Repertory grid techniques work by first identifying concepts and then clustering concepts together in order to reveal underlying dimensions The aim of causal techniques is to identify the key elements of a person's beliefs about a particular problem and to describe the cause and effect relationships among these elements. The mapping of cause-effect relationships has attracted particular attention, mainly from strategy researchers but also from practitioners.
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Conclusion
Cognitive mapping is a process inherent for any person. Different knowledge about surrounding, things, feeling and phenomena are presented in our brain in a form of so called cognitive maps. There are different approaches to understanding and classification of the main terms related to cognitive mapping. Also we can distinguish a number of types of maps on the basis of the semantics they represent or on the representation systems. The main techniques for cognitive maps visualization are causal, semantic and concept mapping. Cognitive mapping processes are applicable to any sphere of our life: self-cognition and socialization, business planning and development, psychological analysis and teambuilding, decision-making and self-organization. The right implementation of cognitive mapping techniques helps us to increase efficiency of business, know ourselves deeper and attain better understanding of people around us.
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References 1) Buzan T. (1993) The Mind Map Book// London: BBC Books; 2) Downs R., Stea D. Cognitive Maps and Spatial Behavior: Process and Products; 3) Fiol C., Huff A. Maps for managers: where are we? Where do we go from here?//Journal of Management Studies; 4) Intraspec.ca Tools for Personal Development Cognitive Mapping: Definitions, Examples, and Resources: http://intraspec.ca/cogmap.php; 5) Jonassen D., Beissner K., Yacci M. Structural knowledge: Techniques for conveying, assessing, and acquiring structural knowledge// Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 6) Lazarus R., Folkman S. Stress, appraisal, and coping// New York: Springer; 7) Lynch K. The Image of the City// The Mobile City; 8) Novak J. How do we learn our lesson?// The Science Teacher; 9) Samsonovich A., Ascoli G. Cognitive Map Dimensions of the Human Value System Extracted from Natural Language// Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications; 10) Sandler J, Rosenblatt B. The concept of the representational world// The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child; 11) Swan J. Using cognitive mapping in management research: Decisions about technical innovation// British Journal of Management; 12) Tolman E. Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men// Classics in the History of Psychology;
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