Experiencing mapping and maps: a human cognition perspective

This paper addresses further possibilities of enhancing our understanding of why maps are successful, exploring additional associated topics in cartographic research, primarily concentrating on human cognitive activities, processes, and behaviours. It starts by revisiting two previous papers by the authors, reflecting on the augmentation and integration of adopted paradigms of cartographic theory, and then presenting some disparate examples of such enhancements, under the over–riding framework of ‘context'. The paper investigates several ideas associated with human cognition and its impact on, and exposure to, maps and mapping: the nature of a human ‘mapping impulse’; the origin of mapping as a human activity; the neuro–cognitive aspects of spatial processes in the human brain; the form and role of internal cognitive maps. We then address the externalization of human internal cognition, detailing the prime example of such creativity, the sketch map. Finally, the paper reflects on the feedback–type role of external maps in internally (re–)shaping the human mind and influencing human behaviour. The map is a fundamental product, but it is uncertain whether its creation is impulsive or derived from innate human abilities. It is clear, however, that its nature and operation match, and also shape, certain neurological and cognitive characteristics of humans.