Geography
592:
Cognitive
Geography and Geographical Cognition
Email: dmark@buffalo.edu
This course will provide an
overview of topics in spatial cognition and perception, with emphasis on
large-scale ("geographic") space. . 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 148972)
TIMETABLE: Geography 592
meets twice a week (Tu & Th), from 9:30 pm to 10:50 pm.
CREDIT HOURS: 3
GRADING: Two non-cumulative
short-essay tests will each be worth 30 % of the grade; a term paper or
research project (due Friday, April 30 2010) will be worth 40 %.
Course
Outline
- January 12 (Tu) (Class cancelled)
- January 14 (Th) 1. Introduction
- Discussion of course objectives and
requirements.
- Ontology, Epistemology, and Cognition;
Cognitive Science
- Other fundamental issues
- Self-introductions of participants
ˇ
January 19 (Tu)
2. Categories
and Cognition; The Semiotic Triangle
- January 21 (Th) 3. Gibson & Granö: The Human
Environment: Landscape and Proximity; Ontology of the Geospatial Domain
- January 26 (Tu) 4. 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.
- January 28 (Th) 5. 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 2 (Tu) 6 Spatial Relations: Introduction; Distance and Direction
- quantitative (Peuquet) and qualitative (Frank)
- February 4 (Th) 7 Spatial Relations: Topological Relations
- The 9-Intersection and related models
- February 9 (Tu) 8 How Language Structures Space
- February 11 (Th) 9 Cross-linguistic Differences in
Spatial Relation terms
- Melissa Bowerman's work, etc.
- February 16 (Tu) 10. 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 18 (Th) 11. Navigation and Wayfinding
- February 23 (Tu) No lecture—DMM at
conference
- February 25 (Th) TEST #1— DMM at conference
- March 2 (Tu) 12 Typologies of Spatial Knowledge
ˇ
Procedural vs configurational, etc.
- March 4 (Th) 13 (Topic to be announced)
- March 9 & 11 Spring break, no classes
- March 16 (Tu) 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 18 (Th) 15 On Size and Scale in Cognition
ˇ
Zubin, Montello, etc.
ˇ
Freundschuh
and Egenhofer article
- March 23 (Tu) 16 Cultural Differences in Spatial Cognition
- March 25 (Th) 17 Anthropology of Landscape
- March 30 (Tu) 18 Human-Computer Interaction for GIS
- April 6 (Tu) 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 (Th) (No class; DMM at STALDAC)
- April 13 (Tu) 21 (Topic to be Announced)
- April 15 (Th) No class- AAG in Washington DC
- April 20 (Tu) 22 (Topic to be Announced)
- April 22 (Th) TEST #2 (non-cumulative)
- April 26 (M) (Last day of classes)
- April 30 (F) Final papers due
Incomplete
Bibliography of Geographic Cognition Research from about 1994!
Last
updated on January 12, 2010
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| UB Geography Department ]