- Three techniques for creating cognitive maps
- 1- Causal mapping
- 2- Conceptual mapping
- 3- Semantic mapping
- Importance of cognitive maps
- Examples
- References
A cognitive map is a mental representation of the arrangement of an environment. Many animals, not just humans, are capable of forming a mental representation of an environment in which they are or have been.
Cognitive maps serve for the construction and accumulation of spatial knowledge, allowing the visualization of images in order to reduce the cognitive load, improve the memory and learning of information.
Cognitive map on drugs and police in English. Wikipedia.org
This term was defined by the psychologist Edward Tolman during the 1940s. Cognitive maps can help navigate unknown territories, give directions, or learn or remember information.
This term was later generalized by other researchers, especially in the field of operational research, to refer to a type of semantic channel that represents an individual's personal knowledge or their schemes.
When a cognitive map is created, information that is irrelevant to the task at hand is often omitted. This means that they may differ from the actual environment in which the map is being created.
Cognitive maps can comprise several types: they can be causal, semantic, and concept. All of these refer to types of mental models or schemas.
Three techniques for creating cognitive maps
Cognitive mapping techniques are used to identify subjective beliefs, and to represent these beliefs externally.
The general approach is to extract subjective statements from individuals about significant concepts and the relationships between these concepts. These concepts and relationships can then be described in some graphic arrangement.
The main techniques for creating cognitive maps are causal, conceptual and semantic mappings. Its main characteristics are detailed below:
1- Causal mapping
It is one of the most used cognitive mapping techniques to investigate the cognition of decision-making in organizations. This theory positions a set of personal perspectives, which the individual uses to make decisions.
This type of map represents a set of causal relationships between the constructs of a belief system. By capturing cause and effect relationships, the reasoning of a particular person can be analyzed.
2- Conceptual mapping
Another popular technique is concept maps. A concept map is a graphic representation in which the nodes represent concepts and the links represent the relationships between these notions. Existing cognitive structures are critical to learning new concepts.
Tagged links, which represent the type of relationship between concepts, can be one-way, two-way, or non-directional.
Concepts and relationships can be categorized, and the concept map can show causal or temporal relationships between concepts.
Concept maps are useful when generating ideas, designing complex structures, communicating ideas, and assisting in knowledge by explicitly integrating new and old knowledge.
3- Semantic mapping
It should be pointed out that causal statements are only part of an individual's total belief system. There are cognitive mapping techniques that can be used to identify other relationships between concepts.
Semantic maps, also known as idea maps, are used to explore an idea without the constraints of an imposed structure.
To make a semantic map, you must start in the center of the paper with the main idea, and work outward in all directions; in this way a growing and organized structure is produced, composed of key words and images.
Around the main idea (a central idea) are drawn from 5 to 10 ideas (descendant ideas), which are related to the central word.
Each of these descendant ideas then serves as a sub-core word for the new level of drawing.
In other words, a semantic map has a central or main concept, with branches that look like trees.
Importance of cognitive maps
Cognitive maps have been studied and are used in various fields such as: psychology, education, archeology, planning, geography, cartography, architecture, administration and history.
As a consequence, these mental models are often referred to as cognitive maps, mind maps, schemas, and frames of reference.
Cognitive maps serve in the construction and accumulation of spatial knowledge, allowing the mind to visualize images to reduce cognitive load, and increase the recognition and knowledge of information.
This type of spatial reasoning can also be used as a metaphor for non-spatial tasks, in which memory and imagination can be involved through the use of spatial knowledge. In this way they can help process the task.
Examples
- At night, when everything is dark and the lights are off, it is possible to find your way to the bathroom and find the lighter easily. This is because the cognitive map helps to remember the location and distribution of these elements.
- A causal diagram can be made that relates the proximity to rural roads with the increase in infections in a population.
- People are able to give directions around their neighborhood because they have a cognitive map of all the streets and buildings in the area.
- When an individual presses the keys on a computer without looking at the keyboard, they do so because they have a cognitive map of the keys.
References
- Cognitive map. Recovered from wikipedia.org
- Cognitive mapping. Recovered from richarddaggan.com
- Cognitive map: definition and examples. Recovered from study.com
- Cognitive map. Recovered from alleydog.com
- Cognitive map. Recovered from psychlopedia.wikspaces.com