A cognitive map is a type of mental representation used by an individual to order their personal store of information about their everyday or metaphorical spatial environment, and the relationship of its component parts.
[1] He tried to explain the behavior of rats that appeared to learn the spatial layout of a maze, and subsequently the concept was applied to other animals, including humans.
[7] They include information about the spatial relations that objects have among each other in an environment and they help us in orienting and moving in a setting and in space.
They are internal representation, they are not a fixed image, instead they are a schema, dynamic and flexible, with a degree of personal level.
Tolman, one of the early cognitive psychologists, introduced this idea when doing an experiment involving rats and mazes.
[10] Unfortunately, further research was slowed due to the behaviorist point of view prevalent in the field of psychology at the time.
[11] In later years, O'Keefe and Nadel attributed Tolman's research to the hippocampus, stating that it was the key to the rat's mental representation of its surroundings.
This observation furthered research in this area and consequently much of hippocampus activity is explained through cognitive map making.
[12] As time went on, the cognitive map was researched in other prospective fields that found it useful, therefore leading to broader and differentiating definitions and applications.
Creating mental maps depends on the individual and their perceptions whether they are influenced by media, real-life, or other sources.
Inputs from senses like vision, proprioception, olfaction, and hearing are all used to deduce a person's location within their environment as they move through it.
This allows for path integration, the creation of a vector that represents one's position and direction within one's environment, specifically in comparison to an earlier reference point.
This resulting vector can be passed along to the hippocampal place cells where it is interpreted to provide more information about the environment and one's location within the context of the cognitive map.
[17] Alex Siegel and Sheldon White (1975) proposed a model of acquisition of spatial knowledge based on different levels.
Then, as a second stage, information about the routes that connect landmarks will be encoded, at the beginning in a non-metric representation form and consequently they will be expanded with metric properties, such as distances, durations and angular deviations.
The hippocampus is connected to the rest of the brain in such a way that it is ideal for integrating both spatial and nonspatial information.
[8] The possible involvement of place cells in cognitive mapping has been seen in a number of mammalian species, including rats and macaque monkeys.
[19] However, there has been some dispute as to whether such studies of mammalian species indicate the presence of a cognitive map and not another, simpler method of determining one's environment.
[24] To do so, some animals establish relationships between landmarks, allowing them to make spatial inferences and detect positions.
But these experiments, led again later by other researchers (for example by Eichenbaum, Stewart, & Morris, 1990 and by Singer et al. 2006) have not concluded with such clear results.
Bennett (1996) it can simply mean that the dogs have seen some landmarks near point B such as trees or buildings and headed towards them because they associated them with the food.
This argument is based on analyses of studies where it has been found that simpler explanations can account for experimental results.
"[21] This point of view is also shared by Grieves and Dudchenko (2013) that showed with their experiment on rats (briefly presented above) that these animals are not capable of making spatial inferences using cognitive maps.
The third is a survey, whereby a person estimates a distance based on a mental image that, to them, might appear like an actual map.
These are presented in five ways: Another method of creating cognitive maps is by means of auditory intake based on verbal descriptions.