ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how cognitive agents such as humans, other animals, or robots can use concrete commonsense physical space (CPS) and abstract representations of space (AbsRS) for solving spatial problems and what are the relative merits of both approaches. It describes how the approaches can be combined. The chapter focuses the roles of spatial configurations and of cognitive agents in the process of spatial problem solving from a cognitive architecture perspective. It discusses the role of the structures of space and time; the role of conceptualizations and representations of these structures; and the role of knowledge about these structures. The chapter describes how and why geographic maps help to solve spatial problems in the real world; then point out cognitive difficulties of communicating about space and spatial representations; and offers a wayfinding example that illustrates how various levels of abstraction can be involved in spatial problem solving and reasoning.
