AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Definition: A cognitive map is any visual representation of a person’s (or a group’s) mental model for a given process or concept. Cognitive maps have no visual rules that they need to obey: there is no restriction on how the concepts and the relationships between them are visually represented.

Detailed explanation-2: -Cognitive maps are a function of the working brain that humans and animals use to move in a new environment. They help us recognizing places, computing directions, distances and critical-thinking on shortcuts and supporting us in wayfinding in an environment.

Detailed explanation-3: -What is an example of a cognitive map? A cognitive map is a mental picture or image of the layout of the physical environment. An example of using a cognitive map would be a driver going home from work on a learned path without a GPS.

Detailed explanation-4: -We also discuss how these three basic elements of cognitive map based navigation spatial coding, landmark anchoring, and route planning might be applied to non-spatial domains to provide the building blocks for many core elements of human thought.

Detailed explanation-5: -(1) They encode “location” in a state space of the task. Their representation of location (2) embeds structural knowledge of the relationships between different states, and (3) it can be generalized across tasks with shared statistical structure but different sensory events.