Language as a Means of Constructing and Conveying Cognitive Maps

Abstract

We frequently rely on language, in conjunction with or in the absence of perceptual experience, to convey spatial information. Production of such descriptions involves a host of processes, including selection of important elements to communicate, temporal structuring of the elements, selection of frames of reference and perspectives, and verbal regularization of spatial relations. The addressee is then faced with the challenge of forming a spatial model from linearly ordered simple expressions. The literature shows that memory representations for these described configurations bear some functional resemblance to perceptually derived representations. However, their construction is not guaranteed, and even when mental models are created, they do not always appear to have perception-like properties. How we organize memory for described spatial information appears to depend not only on the structure of the described space itself, but also on cues from the text, characteristics of our typical interactions with space, and the nature of the expected task.