ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the aspects of spatial cognition and related topics that are most relevant to the advancement of geographic information science. It attempts to paint a broad picture of the field, admittedly from the author’s perspective. The role of formalism in geographic information science and cognitive science deserves some special attention. Computer programs involve formal models of the phenomena that the program is modelling or representing. Spatial cognition research has often presented findings about a specific category of spatial knowledge, namely configurational knowledge. One important methodological tension is between observing natural human behaviour and its results, or performing experiments. Rigorous experimental control is seldom possible in the real world. Thus it is difficult to rule out the possibility that extraneous factors are influencing the results. Human natural language can be a particularly interesting site for studying spatial cognition.
