Geography 592:
Cognitive Geography and Geographical Cognition
Email: dmark@geog.buffalo.edu
This course will provide an
overview of topics in spatial cognition and perception. Topics will include map
perception, wayfinding and navigation, behavioral geography, categories of
geographic things,spatial relations, and environmental 'perception'. We will
also examine how human natural languages represent and express spatial
concepts. Implications for applications such as vehicle navigation systems, and
both database contents and user interfaces for geographic information systems
will also be examined.
FACTS ABOUT THE COURSES
SPRING 2006 INFORMATION: GEO 592 (Registration Number 155288)
TIMETABLE: Geography 592
meets twice a week (M & W), from 12:30 pm to 1:50 pm.
CREDIT HOURS: 3
GRADING: Two non-cumulative
short-essay tests will each be worth 30 % of the grade; a term paper (due
Friday, May 5 2006) will be worth 30 %, and a research presentation to the
class will be worth 10 %.
Course Outline
- January 18 (W) 1. Introduction
- Discussion of course objectives and
requirements.
- Ontology, Epistemology, and Cognition;
Cognitive Science
- Other fundamental issues
- January 23 (M) 2. Categories and Cognition;
The Semiotic Triangle
- January 25 (W) 3. Gibson & Granö: The
Human Environment: Landscape and Proximity
- January 30 (M) 4. Ontology of the Geospatial
Domain
- February 1 (W) 5. Research Approaches in
Cognitive Geography
- Human Subjects Research; Designing Experiments;
Ethnography
ˇ University
at Buffalo tutorial on human subjects
ˇ University
of Minnesota tutorial on Informed Consent
ˇ The
Belmont Report
- February 6 (W) 6. Spatial Categories: Entity
Types and Feature Codes
ˇ Smith, B., and Mark, D. M., 1998. Ontology and Geographic KindsProceedings,
Eighth International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, Vancouver, British
Columbia.
ˇ Mark, D. M., Smith, B., and Tversky, B., 1999. Ontology and Geographic
Objects: An Empirical Study of Cognitive Categorization In Freksa, C., and Mark, D. M., editors, Spatial
Information Theory: A Theoretical Basis for GIS, Berlin: Springer-Verlag,
Lecture Notes in Computer Sciences, pp. 283-298.
- February 8 (W) 7. Spatial Categories,
continued
- Mark, D. M., and Turk, A. G., 2003. Landscape
Categories in Yindjibarndi: Ontology, Environment, and Language. In
Kuhn, W., Worboys, M., and Timpf, S., Editors, Spatial Information
Theory: Foundations of Geographic Information Science, Berlin:
Springer-Verlag, Lecture Notes in Computer Science No. 2825, pp. 31-49.
- February 13 (M) 8 Spatial Relations: Introduction; Distance and
Direction
- quantitative (Peuquet) and qualitative (Frank)
- February 15 (W) 9 Spatial Relations:
Topological Relations
- The 9-Intersection and related models
- February 20 (M) 10 How Language Structures
Space
- February 22 (W) 11 Cross-linguistic
Differences in Spatial Relation terms
- March 1 (W) 12 Navigation and Wayfinding
- March 6 (M) 13 Typologies of Spatial Knowledge
ˇ Procedural vs configurational, etc.
- March 8 (W) Association of American Geographers
meeting, Chicago; class cancelled
- March 13 & 15 Spring break, no classes
- March 20 (M) 14 "Mental Maps"
ˇ Previous research in geography. Gould and White's
book. Kuipers' work. Do 'mental maps' or 'cognitive maps' have to be 'map-
like'? Tversky's 'cognitive collage'
- March 22 (W) 15 On Size and Scale in
Cognition
ˇ Zubin, Montello, etc.
ˇ Freundschuh
and Egenhofer article
- March 27 (M) 16 Cultural Differences in Spatial Cognition
- March 29 (W) 17 Anthropology of Landscape
- April 3 (M) 18 Human-Computer Interaction for GIS
- April 10 (M) 20 Behavioral Geography and
Environmental 'Perception'
- How economic and social/cultural geographers
have included mental models of geographic space in the research.
Golledge; others. Choice models. Hierarchical models of space.
- Environmental 'perception' is a 'mis-named'
sub-field of geography. Particularly has been concerned with hazards, how
people think about natural hazards and react to them.
- April 12 (W) (Topic to be Announced)
- April 17 (M) (Topic to be Announced)
- April 19 (W) Student Presentations
- April 24 (M) Student Presentations
- April 26 (W) Student Presentations
- May 1 (M) TEST #2 (non-cumulative)
- May 5 (F) Final papers due
Incomplete
Bibliography of Geographic Cognition Research
Last updated on January 17, 2006
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