Spatial Knowledge Acquisition in the Process of Navigation: A Review

an article by Negar Ahmadpoor (University of Nottingham, UK) and Sina Shahab (Cardiff University, UK) published in Current Urban Studies Volume 7 Issue 1 (March 2019)

Abstract

Spatial cognition has become an increasingly important area of study since it represents a major type of human knowledge with considerable practical significance.

The general assumption is that people’s spatial knowledge forms people’s spatial behaviour, such as navigation, in the environment.

However, there are some critical issues within this area, including:

• how such knowledge is represented and organised,
• the mechanisms by which it is activated, and
• the elementary and higher-level cognitive processes that function upon the knowledge base to produce new knowledge as well as the factors that are influential on acquiring spatial knowledge.

The theories regarding spatial knowledge acquisitions have attempted to address these issues.

This paper discusses these issues by reviewing the literature.

As such, the paper firstly provides the research background on spatial knowledge acquisition and the theories of spatial knowledge development. Secondly, the paper debates the main factors affecting acquiring and forming knowledge about the environment.

In doing that, the effects of two main factors are discussed:

1. the means of spatial knowledge acquisition (direct experience, physical map, and mobile maps), and
2. the role of different properties of physical environment.

Full text (PDF 19pp)

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The collective knowledge of social tags: Direct and indirect influences on navigation, learning, and information processing

an article by Ulrike Cress and Christoph Held (Knowledge Media Research Center, Tuebingen, Germany ) and Joachim Kimmerle (University of Tuebingen, Germany) published in Computers & Education Volume 60 Issue 1 (January 2013)

Abstract

Tag clouds generated in social tagging systems can capture the collective knowledge of communities.

Using as a basis spreading activation theories, information foraging theory, and the co-evolution model of cognitive and social systems, we present here a model for an extended information scent, which proposes that both collective and individual knowledge have a significant influence on link selection, incidental learning, and information processing.

Two experimental studies tested the applicability of the model to a situation in which individual knowledge and collective knowledge were contradictory to each other. The results of the first experiment showed that a higher individual strength of association between a target in demand and a tag led to a higher probability of selecting corresponding links, combined with less thorough information processing for non-corresponding links.

But users also adapted their navigation behaviour to the collective knowledge (strength of associations of tags) of the community and showed incidental learning during navigation, which resulted in a change of their individual strength of associations.

The second experiment confirmed these results and showed, in addition, that the effects also occurred for indirect associations.

Altogether, the results show that the extended information scent is an appropriate and fertile model for describing the interplay of individual knowledge and the collective knowledge of social tags.

Highlights

► We present a model for an extended information scent.
► Two experimental studies tested the applicability of the model.
► Individual knowledge influenced link selection and information processing.
► Collective knowledge had also an impact on navigation and on incidental learning.
► The effects also occurred for indirect associations.

Figures and tables from this article

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The Architecture of Information

an article by Martyn Dade-Robertson (School of Architecture Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University (his research group’s work can be seen at www.archaid.org)) published in Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology Volume 39 Number 1 (October/November 2012)

Editor’s Summary

The relationship among architecture, information and information architecture can be thought of from the perspective of architectural prehistory.

The first instance of architecture may not have been a structure but the more conceptual designation and naming of territory, an information activity.

Early representations of digital space drew heavily on images of buildings and cities as a visual medium. As information space has evolved, the link to any physical reality has vanished, though we retain the metaphor of navigation to make real the experience of interacting with the abstract on multiple levels.

Users relate with information in semantic space, screen space and interaction space, each of which must be addressed by the information architect.

The rise of ubiquitous computing may disrupt much of that conceptualisation, leaving only an abstracted link between information and user action, with that interaction itself shaping the architectural space.

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