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Landmarks are Exaggerated

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Abstract

In this discussion essay, I contend that the role of landmarks is exaggerated in basic and applied spatial cognition research. Specifically, I discuss empirical and theoretical arguments consistent with two claims. First, the word landmark is a label for several different concepts, although its precise reference in a particular context is rarely specified carefully. Further, whether specified or not, researchers never use the term landmark to mean everything that the concept can legitimately mean. Thus, when researchers assert something about the role of landmarks in spatial cognitive activities, they exaggerate their particular meaning at the expense of a broader ontology. Second, I claim that even when landmarks are clearly and precisely defined, their role in specifying location is misunderstood and less fundamental than proposed. In exaggerating landmarks, other important components of spatial knowledge, memory, and reasoning are undervalued. Taken together, these two claims support my contention that landmarks are exaggerated in spatial cognition.

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Notes

  1. They must be remembered as a specific token, not just a type. Not “a house” but “Leila’s House” (if there are no other houses around, a house becomes a token object).

  2. Of course, the physical object that materially instantiates a sign can function as a landmark instead of a semiotic artifact—“go past the metal pole holding the red six-sided object”.

  3. Formally defined geometric terms like “metric” do not strictly describe human spatial knowledge, as violations of the metric axioms, etc., are easily demonstrated. I use the term informally to suggest that humans display considerably more spatial knowledge than just nonmetric properties like connectivity and sequence.

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Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this essay was originally given as an oral presentation on July 5, 2010, at the international meeting “Las Navas 2010: Cognitive and Linguistic Aspects of Geographic Space”, held at Las Navas del Marques, Avila, Spain.

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  1. Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106-4060, USA

    Daniel R. Montello

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Correspondence to Daniel R. Montello.

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Montello, D.R. Landmarks are Exaggerated. Künstl Intell 31, 193–197 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13218-016-0473-5

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