Conclusions

Abstract

The discipline of geography traditionally has been defined to include a wide range of interests in both the physical environment and the human activities taking place in the environment. A simple connectionist definition of geography might be the study of how people are connected to the geographic space serving as their environment. Although elements of physical and human geography can be studied in isolation, any approach that focuses on the connections between humans and their environments offers a holistic integrated perspective for geographic research. The theories and methods of cognitive science that have been discussed in the previous chapters offer such a strategy. Geographic researchers using this research strategy make the important connection between physical and human geography by focusing on how humans process information about environments to determine their behaviors. These cognitive explanations of human behavior in geographic environments should include statements of what environmental information was important for decision making, how the information was acquired, how the information was stored in human memory, and how it was processed to make the decisions that directed behavior.