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More Than a List: What Outdoor Free Listings of Landscape Categories Reveal About Commonsense Geographic Concepts and Memory Search Strategies

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Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9368))

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Abstract

Categorization is central to abstraction from real world geographic phenomena to computational representations, and as such has been the subject of considerable research. We report on one common approach, free listing, in an outdoor setting and explore terms elicited in response to the question ‘What is there for you in a landscape?’. We collected term lists, and explanations for the strategies used from 89 participants in two mountain and one parkland setting. We analyzed results not only using term frequency, but also by cognitive saliency, exploring list structures, and building aggregated networks visualizing links between terms. We observed memory search strategies, such as exploiting and switching semantic clusters in our data, with participants using for example not only the local setting to start clusters, but also memories of familiar landscapes to switch between clusters. Our results reveal that simple free listing experiments can help us understand how categories are linked, and also highlight ways in which landscapes are conceptualized.

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Acknowledgements

The research in this study was funded by the ‘Forschungskredit’ of the University of Zurich, grant no. FK-13-104 and the University Research Priority Program Language and Space (URPP SpuR) of the University of Zurich. We thank all participants in Val Müstair, Flims and Irchel Park who took part in this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Flurina M. Wartmann, Ekaterina Egorova, Curdin Derungs & Ross S. Purves

  2. University Priority Research Program Language and Space (URPP SpuR), University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Ekaterina Egorova, Curdin Derungs & Ross S. Purves

  3. Department of Geography, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

    David M. Mark

Authors
  1. Flurina M. Wartmann
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  2. Ekaterina Egorova
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  3. Curdin Derungs
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  4. David M. Mark
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  5. Ross S. Purves
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Correspondence to Flurina M. Wartmann .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Sara Irina Fabrikant

  2. ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Martin Raubal

  3. School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Michela Bertolotto

  4. University of Winchester, Winchester, United Kingdom

    Clare Davies

  5. Dept. of Geography and Env. Studies, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

    Scott Freundschuh

  6. College of Arts and Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

    Scott Bell

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Wartmann, F.M., Egorova, E., Derungs, C., Mark, D.M., Purves, R.S. (2015). More Than a List: What Outdoor Free Listings of Landscape Categories Reveal About Commonsense Geographic Concepts and Memory Search Strategies. In: Fabrikant, S., Raubal, M., Bertolotto, M., Davies, C., Freundschuh, S., Bell, S. (eds) Spatial Information Theory. COSIT 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9368. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23374-1_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23374-1_11

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