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Perspectives in Externalizations of Mental Spatial Representations

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Societal Geo-innovation (AGILE 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography ((LNGC))

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Abstract

Place is a core component of human spatial knowledge and therefore a central topic in GI Science. People use externalizations of mental spatial representations to communicate about space. Textual descriptions and graphical descriptions are the two main modes of communication. In this paper a distinction of three scales of spatial descriptions is assumed and textual and graphical descriptions are collected and analyzed in order to investigate the differences between the spatial descriptions. Thereby the focus lies on the properties and perspectives of the descriptions. It is found that within the textual descriptions people tend to not consistently use one perspective, but switch perspectives and predominantly apply the route perspective. For the graphical descriptions there has been no clear categorization of description perspectives. However, there are differences in the properties of these descriptions that indicate different perspectives.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Taylor and Tversky distinguish three frames of reference: (1) relative, where the origin of the coordinate system is one of the participants, the speaker or the addressee, (2) intrinsic, where the origin of the coordinate system is a specific object, and (3) extrinsic, where the origin of the coordinate system is external to the scene.

  2. 2.

    The two different terms of reference are (1) LRFB = left, right, front, back, and (2) NSWE = north, south, west, east.

  3. 3.

    A branch is defined here as an alternative path through the region. A description with two branches thereby consists of two integrated route descriptions.

  4. 4.

    A circuit is defined here as a route description through a region with the destination equals the origin.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Muenster, HeisenbergstraĂźe 2, 48149, Muenster, Germany

    H. Löwen, A. Schwering & J. Krukar

  2. Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, 3010, Australia

    S. Winter

Authors
  1. H. Löwen
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  2. A. Schwering
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  3. J. Krukar
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  4. S. Winter
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to H. Löwen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University & Research Lab of Geo-Info Sci and Remote Sensing, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Arnold Bregt

  2. Geoinformatics and Cartography, Finnish Geospatial Research Institute, Masala, Finland

    Tapani Sarjakoski

  3. Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Ron van Lammeren

  4. Laboratory Geoinformation and Remote Sensing/GeoDesk, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, Gelderland, The Netherlands

    Frans Rip

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Löwen, H., Schwering, A., Krukar, J., Winter, S. (2017). Perspectives in Externalizations of Mental Spatial Representations. In: Bregt, A., Sarjakoski, T., van Lammeren, R., Rip, F. (eds) Societal Geo-innovation. AGILE 2017. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56759-4_7

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