Mental Imagery In Cognitive Maps

Mental imagery is the idea in a person's mind of the physical world outside of that person. It is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of perceiving some object or event, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually occurring with the senses. Traditionally, visual mental imagery, the most discussed variety, was thought to be caused by the presence of picture-like representations (mental images) in the mind, soul, or brain, but this is no longer universally accepted. Mental imagery is important because it occurs in many cognitive tasks, and helps us understand related phenomena such as hallucinations, day-dreams, and dreaming. It also may be useful to understand how elicit imagery

The maps of blind people make more use of sound and touch cues than do those of sighted people. People in wheelchairs emphasize physical barriers in their maps, obstacles that are missing from maps of those able to move more freely.

Geographers also use cognitive maps to fill in their knowledge about the physical characteristics. Knowing how people view a location provides additional information about physical attributes - notice a feature or not. Cognitive mapping is a practical application in many fields including community design, architecture and recreational planning. Some factors that influence knowledge and recognizability of places includes: proximity, size, location, shape and social-cultural factors.

Perception can be related to cognitive mapping because through perception we are able to add our own sensory input to create something that is relevant to our lives. Our experiences, familiar objects, the smell of some aroma, the sound of certain music, all add onto our experiences which help create our cognitive maps. This all comes together and creates a mental representation which helps us decode information about the location and attributes of phenomena in our everyday