Environment, cognition, and culture: Reconsidering the cognitive map

Journal of Environmental Psychology 33 (2013) 14e25

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Environment, cognition, and culture: Reconsidering the cognitive map Harry Heft Department of Psychology, Denison University, Granville, OH 43023, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Available online 23 September 2012

When psychological research is formulated from an interactionist point of view, the individual and environment are treated as independent, if interacting factors. From such an approach, cultural influences tend to be marginalized as ‘contextual’ causal factors standing apart from psychological processes. This viewpoint fails to appreciate adequately that culturalehistorical processes play a constitutive rather than solely a causal role in human development. This claim is examined using the concept of the cognitive map as a case study. A review of a body of experimental research as well as evidence from cultural anthropology indicates that configurational (survey) thinking is properly viewed as being contingent on the intersection of socialehistorical processes, an individual’s ontogenetic history, and the character of the immediate circumstances confronting the individual. When prototypical attributes of cognitive maps e such as their geometric, configurational character and the underlying notion of threedimensional space e are considered with respect to their origins in Western cultural history, configurational thinking can be seen as arising out of sociocultural processes that play a constitutive role in ontogenesis. This view of environmental cognition is in keeping with a transactional approach, which takes the psychological domain to be embedded in a network of processes that constitute and sustain human functioning. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Culture Spatial cognition Cognitive development Metatheory

“The historical separation of anthropology and psychology, whatever may have caused it, must surely be counted as one of the most stunting developments in the history of the human sciences” (Bruner, 1996; p. xiii).

1. Introduction Sociocultural processes have long been marginalized in much of experimental psychology; and apart from a handful of notable contributions over more than a 30 year span (e.g., Altman, 1976; Altman & Chemers, 1984; Altman, Rapoport, & Wohlwill, 1980; Low, 2000; Rapoport, 1977, 1980), environmental psychology is no exception here,. For the most part, little more than lip service has been paid to the significance of sociocultural factors for understanding psychological processes. Psychologists typically treat sociocultural influences as ‘distal’ and remote from more immediate personeenvironment processes. At best, their existence is acknowledged as mere ‘contextual’ factors. While it is widely admitted that cultural factors are important eventually to consider for the purpose of psychological analyses, for the most part they may be bracketed out of these analyses and set aside without doing

E-mail address: [email protected]. 0272-4944/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2012.09.002

any significant harm to our more focal psychological concerns. Underlying this standard treatment is often a tacit assumption that psychological processes are universal in character, and that whatever cultural influences are at work can be peeled away to reveal core processes. However, that standpoint, I will suggest, is problematic both conceptually and empirically. As we will see in the course of this paper, sociocultural influences hardly stand apart from psychological processes, but instead, are enmeshed in ongoing environmenteperson relations as constititutive influences at the level of individual experience. Scientists invariably bring a particular style of thinking to inquiry, which in turn fashions how they conceptualize their subject matter. Psychology’s tendency to marginalize sociocultural processes is symptomatic of a particular style of thinking that Altman and Rogoff (1987) called interactionism. In their masterful opening chapter of the first Handbook of Environmental Psychology, Altman and Rogoff (1987) adapted Pepper’s (1942) schema of “world hypotheses” or world views to patterns of thinking in environmental psychology over its initial decades. They argue quite aptly that environmental psychology has been dominated e and I would add, continues to be dominated e by an interactionist worldview. Without a doubt, discernable progress has been made in environmental psychology by working from this perspective. There have been successes in identifying a number of conditions of

H. Heft / Journal of Environmental Psychology 33 (2013) 14e25

everyday environments that affect human functioning and wellbeing; and some useful models have been offered to explain these effects. That said, I submit that environmental psychology has been seriously hampered from its beginnings by this style of thinking because of the way that environmenteperson relations are conceptualized from an interactionist perspective. This claim can be examined in relation to a variety of different issues of concern to environmental psychologists. The fact that sociocultural processes to date have played a minor role in environmental psychology can be attributed, in my view, to the dominance of this perspective. In the first part of the essay, I will briefly examine the main tenets of an interactionist style of thinking, and then illustrate this interactionist approach as it has been applied by psychologists to cultural influences. I will draw on Bronfenbrenner’s influential model of the relationship between nested levels of environmental factors and the individual as a starting point. This model will be shown to reveal, perhaps unintentionally, several shortcomings in how culture is often conceptualized within psychology. After these introductory remarks, the discussion will then move to, in effect, a case study of the place of culture in a particular domain of psychology e namely, the study of environmental cognition. This topic, and one of its key concepts, the cognitive map, has played a central role in environmental psychology for decades. A consideration of the research carried out on cognitive maps, and more generally environmental cognition, bear witness to the fact that cultural processes and other ‘contextual’ factors have been routinely set aside in our investigations. And yet, the significance of these omissions is starting to become apparent in the light of recent investigations in both developmental psychology and cultural anthropology. In the course of this discussion, we will reevaluate the concept of the cognitive map in the context of sociocultural processes, which in turn will bring to light some of the limitations of interactionist thinking. In short, this paper has a dual purpose. It is an examination of the concept of the cognitive map as it has been studied from an interactionist perspective, and then in the light of recent research that would seem to challenge that conceptualization. More generally, this analysis of the cognitive map will be used as a lens through which the relationship between psychological and sociocultural processes can be examined. By doing so, I hope to make some initial steps in redressing what Bruner (1996) has singled out as “surely . one of the most stunting developments in the history of the human sciences” e the long historical separation of psychology and cultural anthropology. In the end, these considerations will contribute to a transactional framework, which is more in keeping with the tenets of the ecological sciences, and with the “root metaphor” (Pepper, 1942) of an ecosystem at its core, than is the prevailing interactionist mode of thought (see, Heft, 2012a). 2. Assumptions of interactionism Without question, interactionism has been the most influential way of conceptualizing environmenteperson relations, not only within environmental psychology’s relative brief history, but in experimental psychology over the past 100 years. Interactionism is not specific to any one theory or model, but rather it is a metatheory which characterizes a family of theories sharing a number of features. Principally, an interactionist approach takes the individual as a bounded, independent entity existing among other independent entities, such as other persons, physical objects, and environing conditions. Although independent, these various entities typically exert an influence on one another. An image that is often invoked to illustrate interactionism is a collection of billiard balls, each ball

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fully independent of all the others, while each being susceptible to a change of state (in this case, position) as a result of impacts from any of the others (Clark, 2002). The origins of this conceptualization are not difficult to trace: they can be found in 16th and 17th century attempts to apply a machine-like metaphor to natural phenomena, whereby parts of a larger entity (e.g., the gears of a clockwork) affect other parts in a causal sequence. Such a view was intended to supplement and frequently to replace explanations of natural occurrences that referred to hidden, intrinsic qualities (e.g., entelechies) of the entities. Twentieth century stimulus-response and inputeoutput models are direct descendents of this mechanistic style of thinking. Some versions of interactionism, especially post1970, also recognize that causal influences can run in both directions, with the environment affecting the organisms and viceversa. But crucially, even here the entities in question are conceptualized as independent and self-contained.1 Typically, environmental psychology’s goal of examining the effects of environmental conditions on psychological processes has involved only a shift in directing more attention to environmental variables than had previously been the case, while retaining an interactionist approach to the environmenteorganism relationship. In capsule summary, here are a few interrelated features of interactionist thinking, as it has been applied to psychology. (For a more detailed discussion of interactionism, see, Heft, 2012a.) (a) The unit of analysis is the individual viewed as a bounded, semiautonomous entity. (b) The individual is subject primarily to independent influences located at a remove from his/her boundaries. This means that the individual is driven by factors located ‘outside’ in the surround and by biological determinants located within the body.2 Qualities that are seemingly attributable to the individual when considered as a whole, on closer examination, are seen to be derivative from (in some cases, reducible to) one or both of these two sources. (c) The bases for change in the state of the individual are the ‘impacts’ stemming from entities and conditions in the surround, as well as ‘pushes’ from within the individual. In either case, change is caused by some antecedent factor. This linear, serial account of causality [classically, called efficient causality to distinguish it from other forms of causality (Grene, 1963)] conveys a mechanistic point of view whereby the individual is in effect like a cog pushed by forces that often operate at levels other than that of the individual considered as a whole. Individuals can sometimes appear to be the initiators of effects, but typically they function as distinguishable, selfcontained entities within a broader causal nexus of influences. This style of interactionist/mechanist thinking has been remarkably fruitful when it has been applied in engineering and physics at the level of middle-range phenomena. In psychology it has been employed with some success, particularly as a way of structuring research methodologies that employ the template of assessing the possible impact of environmental variables (independent variables) on psychological outcomes (dependent variables). In my opinion, however, as a conceptual framework for psychology, interactionism has been an impediment to achieving

1 To illustrate this point, consider the notion of the statistical interaction of two (or more) independent variables. 2 Such a stance has gained greater force in recent years through the influence of work from an evolutionary psychology perspective, which locates some ‘cultural influences’ in the biological substrate of the organism, while giving secondary importance, at best, to sociocultural processes.

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a rich understanding of how animate, living systems as opposed to machines operate. The claim that interactionism has impeded progress can be explicated, as already noted, with respect to a wide range of issues that have relevance for psychology; but my overall focus here will be on the way that psychology has dealt with the issue of culture. A brief example from environmental psychology’s brief history can serve to illustrate initially how culture has typically been handled in this field. Unquestionably, one of the earliest empirical influences on the development of environmental psychology was Edward Hall’s (1959, 1966) cross-cultural studies of interpersonal distance. Indeed, it is fair to say that the first generation of environmental psychologists cut their teeth on this and related works (e.g., Sommer, 1969). Most centrally, what Hall demonstrated through this early research was the central role of sociocultural processes in the study of psychological phenomena, and in particular, interpersonal processes. Hall showed that interpersonal distance was a dimension of interpersonal communication that often varied systematically between cultures. He argued that even though the sociocultural dimensions of interpersonal distance usually go unnoticed by individuals who are, as a matter of course, saturated by cultural practices, their influence on human functioning is pervasive and inescapable nonetheless. However, in the hands of psychologists operating with an interactionist lens, interpersonal distance soon became mostly a variable to be manipulated in an experimental format independently of culture. Interpersonal distance zones were investigated by a variety of techniques, from self-reports and manipulations of models to examining the consequences of violating interpersonal distance practices (see review by Aiello, 1987). By the end of the 1980’s, research along these lines had been exhausted, and in my view, the phenomena had been trivialized in the process. In part, this was because what was most valuable in Hall’s work e that sociocultural processes penetrate to the very heart of psychological phenomena e had slipped out of view. From an interactionist perspective, sociocultural processes are but one of many factors external to the person, and as such, they can be separated off to reveal the essence of the psychological domain. In recent decades, this essentialist way of thinking has led to the postulation of innate mental modules, some of which structure social behavior and decision-making (e.g., Tooby & Cosmides, 1992).2 But rather than being remote and separable from on-going psychological experience, the sociocultural domain is woven into the very fabric of the daily life of individuals. Indeed, as many have been arguing for decades now, sociocultural influences are among those factors that constitute human psychological phenomena (Bruner, 1990; Cole, 1998; Geertz, 1973; Heft, 2007, 2012b; Ingold, 1995). In his seminal essay, “The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man, Geertz (1973) presented this perspective succinctly:

are independent, causal influences rather than being mutually constituting. (These claims will receive further attention below.) In order to gain the needed appreciation for the central place of sociocultural influences in psychological processes, we will need to set aside interactionism for a style of thinking far more suitable to a consideration of animate systems. 3. An influential model of culture and human development In his book The Ecology of Human Development, Bronfenbrenner (1979) offered a framework that has been widely cited as broadening the scope of psychological analysis, particularly with regard to social and cultural factors that may affect ontogenetic development. He conceptualized the individual e and specifically, the child e as being embedded within a nested hierarchy of environmental structures, from the immediate realm of dyadic interactions (micro-systems) through institutional (exosystems) and cultural systems (macrosystems; see Fig. 1). With this important contribution, Bronfenbrenner argued in a convincing manner that a comprehensive account of the relationship between the environment and an individual’s development needs to encompass the reciprocal influences transpiring across and within these nested structures. Although this type of thinking may have been new at that time to some environmental and developmental psychologists, hierarchical conceptualizations of natural systems had been commonplace among systems thinkers for quite a while (e.g., Bertalanffy, 1968; Campbell, 1974; Pattee, 1973; Simon, 1973; Weiss, 1973). Over the years since the Bronfenbrenner framework was first offered, a hierarchical viewpoint has justifiably been embraced by many individuals working on issues pertinent to environmental and developmental psychology. Without question, it has been an important contribution which, perhaps more than anything else in recent decades, has led environmental psychologists to think about culture. And yet, the model has several, often overlooked limitations. My concern here at the outset is not with Bronfenbrenner’s intentions e my hunch is that he would have been sympathetic to my concerns e but rather with what the framework seems to

Undirected by culture patterns . man’s behavior would be virtually ungovernable, a mere chaos of pointless acts and exploding emotions, his experience virtually shapeless. Culture, the accumulated totality of such patterns is not just an ornament of human existence but e the principal basis of its specificity e an essential condition of it” (p. 46). Evidence for such a claim can be found in those rare, yet tragic cases of children who have developed in relative social isolation. Such children are not merely missing some vital set of inputs which, if they had been in place, would have completed an otherwise full array of components or ‘modules.’ They have missed out on some crucial formative possibilities. However, an interactionist style of thinking masks this fact with its assumption that the person, on the one hand, and sociocultural processes, on the other,

Fig. 1. Bronfenbrenner’s model of the context for child development.

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suggest, intentionally or not, about personeenvironment relations. It will be useful to consider three interrelated limitations of this model because they are symptomatic of a few deeper problems that continue to hamper psychology, and environmental psychology specifically. These problems are attendant to an interactionist perspective. (a) First, the model has a static nature, as it fails to convey adequately the dynamic qualities of both within level and between level processes. Events at all levels from the individual to the sociocultural are on-going and dynamically engaged in, on the one hand, maintaining stability of the systems involved, and, on the other, participating in processes of change and transformation. The model, however, does not emphasize these dynamic qualities forcefully enough. Although in some later writings concerning “chronosystems,” Bronfenbrenner (1994) gave greater weight to ‘process,’ the model as it stands and is best known, conveys a mostly static character. While it aptly prompts researchers to consider the wide range of factors that need to be considered when attempting to understand some psychological outcome, it conveys an impression that what is critical is what is occurring at a ‘moment in time.’ As such it is more in keeping with what is often called child psychology, which is a somewhat narrow domain of study compared to a developmental psychology, which takes process to be sine qua non. Rather than viewing psychological phenomena at a moment in time, a developmental perspective considers on-going phenomena, each arising out of a particular history, giving them both a retrospective and a prospective character (James, 1890; Thelen & Smith, 1994). (b) The second limitation of the model follows directly from the previous one: the concentric circles of the figure, or alternatively, Bronfenbrenner’s memorable analogy to nested Russian dolls (matryoshkas), suggests that these ‘levels’ are more conceptually separable then in fact they are. The model conveys the impression that in principle one could ‘peel away’ the layers at each level, as one might remove successive layers of an onion, or open up each embedding doll to reveal an embedded one, until reaching a core unit. The core unit, in Bronfenbrenner’s model, would be the person. While there are between level influences throughout the model (indeed, that was Bronfenbrenner’s central point), one can readily come away with the impression that each level is conceptually distinct and self-contained. Like the individual matryoshka doll, the separate levels can be separated, and each could stand alone. As it turns out, that reading fits quite comfortably with an interactionist conceptualization of the relationship between environment (considered at various levels) and the person. The individual (the core unit in the model) can be taken as separable and semiautonomous, and the environment is viewed as a source of influences that are said to “impact” the person (which should be noted, is a particularly interactionist way of putting environmenteperson relations). Environmental conditions are viewed as existing independently of the person and affecting her or him in various ways. Consider sociocultural processes, which are central to the present discussion. Psychologists typically view sociocultural factors to be one of many influences that impinge on the individual. That is, the impact of sociocultural factors is viewed as being overlaid atop of a semi-autonomous psychological/biological core. They are seen as part of the background context for psychological phenomena, much as embedding matryoshka dolls surround the embedded core doll. However, I submit, that this is a flawed way of thinking about these relationships. This point of view fails to acknowledge that sociocultural processes and psychological processes are mutually constituting (see below). Sociocultural processes are not merely layered on a semi-autonomous set of psychological functions, in Geertz’s words, as “just an ornament of human existence”, but they fundamentally participate in realization of the individual as an encultured

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being over the course of ontogenetic development (Bruner, 1990; Donald,1991, 2001). Reciprocally, processes at the sociocultural level of analysis ultimately arise out of collective actions of individuals in context. (c) Third, this view suggests that sociocultural processes operate as ‘top-down’ influences. The problem is that there are better and worse ways of understanding what ‘top-down’ means. This issue goes to the heart of the question of the relationship between culture and psychological processes. One way to conceptualize this relationship, and not a particularly helpful way in my view, is to suppose that processes operating at a higher order of organization causally impose structure on lower level of processes. In some manner, ‘forces’ operate on component entities to impose structure on them collectively. Interactionist thinking requires this type of formulation. Although few put the matter in terms of ‘forces,’ how else are we to understand top-down causal influences? Critically, the problem is that claiming top-down processes impose structure on component processes confuses two different kinds of relations e causal and constitutive. Causal relations refer to cases whereby some property or characteristic of one entity (Y) assessed at a particular time is produced by the influence of some other, independent entity (X) interacting with Y. I referred to this view above as a linear, serial view of causality, or a mechanistic point of view. In contrast, constitutive relations can be illustrated with reference to emergent properties in nature. Simply stated, emergentism refers to those cases where properties not possessed by any component entities are realized when those components merge in some fashion. The standard example, of course, is water. The many properties of water emerge from the combination of hydrogen and oxygen molecules, even though those properties are not immediately present in the molecules themselves. Said differently, water is constituted by hydrogen and oxygen, not caused by it. Recently, Craver and Bechtel (2007) have proposed that generally inter-level, as opposed to intra-level relations, operate in this way: [T]he shroud of mystery surrounding interlevel causation arises from the assumption that the interlevel relation [i.e, that between the higher and lower levels of analysis] in such cases is both constitutive and causal at once. On our view, the interlevel is only constitutive (p. 352). Along these lines, I claim that the relationship between sociocultural processes and individual processes is constitutive rather than causal. Collectively, individuals through their actions constitute culture. And reciprocally, in generating the ‘higher-level’ phenomena, the degrees of freedom of the constituents must by necessity be limited (Heft, 2011). For example, for two individuals to realize a game of chess, both must operate under constraints. In short, the Bronfenbrenner model is also inadequate to the extent that it suggests that top-down processes causally impose structure on lower level processes. The graphic representation of the model (Fig. 1), it seems to me, invites that conceptualization. To review, the three limitations of the Bronfenbrenner model are that, intended or not, it suggests static processes rather than dynamic ones; that the levels are independent of one another; and that inter-level relations are causal rather than constitutive in nature. What is shared among these three stances is that they are all rooted in a worldview whereby the environment and the individual are conceptualized as independent entities and the relationship between them is solely a causal one (in the limited sense of efficient causality). My sense of Bronfenbrenner’s perspective is that he too would have rejected this reading of the model. Let us now change directions somewhat to explore these claims in a more concrete manner, taking the treatment of the concept of the cognitive map in psychology as “a case study.”

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H. Heft / Journal of Environmental Psychology 33 (2013) 14e25

4. The cognitive map and psychological theory Most of the psychological research in spatial cognition over the past 30 years can be traced to one of three perspectives: (1) an information-processing approach (e.g., Golledge, 1987) with Tolman’s (1948) neo-behaviorist paper on cognitive maps being the locus classicus; (2) a tradition stemming from Piaget and Inhelder’s (1967) work on children’s development of spatial cognition (e.g., Hart & Moore, 1973); and (3) a nativist approach to spatial cognition (e.g., Spelke, Lee, & Izard, 2010) with its roots in Cartesian and Kantian thought. Contemporary research on environmental cognition stems from one of these three approaches, and often reflects an amalgam of all three.3 Let us consider each briefly. Based on a series of ingenious experiments, the neo-behaviorist Tolman proposed that organisms acquire “expectations” from prior experiences about where their actions will lead in a maze (Tolman, Ritchie, & Kalish, 1946). Collectively, the set of expectations that Tolman saw as being revealed in his studies of ‘place learning’ has been referred to by later researchers as a cognitive map, although it seems to have been forgotten that Tolman (1948) used the concept more broadly than that.4 What the “expectations” made possible for his test animals were patterns of action in a particular situation, and in turn, a basis for alternative behavior choices when confronted with unexpected changes in the environmental layout. How should we conceptualize this acquired set of behavioral expectations relative to the layout? Most commonly, it is conceptualized as an overview of the layout that is adopted from a vantage point that is not located anywhere on the ground surface, but rather from somewhere above it e from a “bird’s eye view.” This perspective has often been referred to as ‘survey knowledge.’ Tolman’s neo-behaviorist thinking (and that of others), which legitimized the introduction of intervening variables, served as a stepping-stone for psychological theories to embrace ‘cognitive’ factors that mediate stimuluseresponse relations. This modification, along with the advent of computer models, spawned information processing accounts of cognition (Bruner, 1990, Chap. 1). Stemming from different theoretical roots was Piaget’s research on spatial reasoning (e.g., Piaget & Inhelder, 1967), and his overall emphasis on the development of logical mental processes. Herein, mature survey knowledge was typically characterized as reflecting Euclidean geometric properties, with individuals evincing an understanding of geometric relations among its features (Hart & Moore, 1973). With this step, the catch-all ‘survey knowledge’ often became more formalized to capture the configuration of environmental layout. Still, a Piagetian approach differed somewhat from Tolman’s purposive behaviorism, with its even greater emphasis than Tolman on the individual as an agent, whereby engaging or operating on the environment led to transformations in cognitive functioning as a result of those actions. But in recent decades, Piagetian approaches to cognitive development have receded in significance as research has seemed to reveal that Piagetians underestimated the ages at which various cognitive skills began to appear in children. This critique has led to the view that an array of innate processes structure cognition from the outset

3 I have omitted mention of Lynch (1970) here because while he offers an invaluable nomenclature, his writings on cognitive maps do not commit to any particular psychological account. 4 Tolman employs the term ‘cognitive map’ to refer to broad, comprehensive modes of thinking, in contrast to the metaphor of a ‘strip map’ which refers to narrow, linear thinking. He then applies this analysis “to indicate the significance of these findings on rats for the clinical behavior of men (Tolman, 1948, p. 189).” Specifically, he attributes instances of human prejudice and injustice toward others as products of narrow, strip map-like thinking, and he calls for comprehensive cognitive map-like thinking as a remedy.

of infancy on, these processes commonly described as “core knowledge” modules (Spelke & Kinzler, 2007). This explicitly nativist approach rests on the assumption that core knowledge is in place from the outset of life as a birthright of species’ evolutionary history. Like the Piagetian framework, the intellectual antecedents of this approach can be found squarely in Kant’s claim that awareness of space and spatial relations is not derived from experience, but rather it presupposes a priori spatial understanding. “Space is not an empirical concept which is derived from experiences. For in order that certain sensations be referred to something outside of me . the representation of space must be presupposed” (Kant, 1781, p. 68). In the hands of contemporary nativist researchers, Kantian a priori categories are taken to be best understood from an evolutionary psychology perspective. This way of thinking has come to dominate much of the recent discussion of spatial knowing in both developmental and animal psychology5 It is important for our purposes here to recognize that all three approaches share at least one characteristic with interactionist thinking. In different ways, each approach views the individual as a bounded, semi-autonomous entity. That is to say, in spite of the fact that each position gives considerable weight to the place of organismeenvironment interaction, when it comes down to conceptualizing the nature of psychological knowledge, the latter is something specific to the individual organism; and a sharp conceptual separation is maintained between organismic processes and environmental circumstances. For that reason, it is not uncommon to find researchers in environmental psychology operating from a position that is somewhat of a mash-up of all three viewpoints, incorporating some combination of Tolman’s concept of the cognitive map, Piaget’s emphasis on logical structures, and the nativist claim of a priori constraints on environmental cognition. Moreover, all three approaches share an attribute that is central for the present discussion: they take survey knowledge, and in particular configurational understanding of the environment, to be the most advanced form of spatial knowing. For the purposes of this paper, I will focus solely on the more recent line of research that proposes innate foundations for spatial cognition. 4.1. The development of spatial cognition The empirical basis for the recent claim that a geometric representation of environmental layout is innate stems from Cheng’s (1986) influential research. In this work, rats were trained to find food in one corner of a rectangular enclosure. After being removed for a brief time and then returned to the enclosure, rats searched for the food with comparable frequency both in the corner where food had previously been hidden and in the corner diagonal to that one. Because diagonal corners in a rectangular enclosure share common geometric information (e.g., long wall to left, short wall to right), these results were interpreted as indicating that the animals were responding to geometric information. Significantly, this pattern of responding persisted even when distinctive features, such as an odor or a light e referred to in this literature as “non-geometric cues” e were made available in the enclosure. The apparent ineffectual character of these cues further bolstered the interpretation that geometric properties of the enclosure were the primary bases for spatial orientation, and that sensitivity to these properties is innate. Hermer and Spelke (1994) adapted this methodology for the investigation of spatial cognition in young children. Participants

5 As it might apply to other domains of psychological functioning, nativist thinking has also made inroads in environmental psychology as well (e.g., Kellert, 1993).

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(18e24 month olds) entered a small rectangular enclosure (60  40  60 ) with white sheets serving as walls. The participants’ attention was draw initially to a toy located on the floor in one corner of the enclosure. Subsequently, the toy was hidden behind one of the walls. The children were then disoriented by being rotated in place slowly, after which they were instructed to find the hidden toy. The children tended to search most often in the correct corner and in the geometrically identical opposite corner, and this pattern of responding was sustained even when one of the walls in the enclosure was colored. These findings were replicated in additional experiments utilizing objects in the enclosure (toys) as potential non-geometric cues. Hermer and Spelke concluded that this pattern of results is evidence that young children, like the rats in Cheng (1986), possess an innate geometric module that is responsive to Euclidean properties of the layout, and that geometric information was utilized as a basis for reestablishing orientation in the enclosure. Because non-geometric information (e.g., colored walls) did not affect performance, this capacity would appear to be encapsulated from ‘peripheral’ influences e suggesting that it operates as a mental module (Fodor, 1983, but see Fodor, 2001). Likewise, research with a number of different species e from ants and bees to rats and birds e seemed to support the claim for innate core knowledge operating along the lines of Euclidean principles and common among animals (Gouteaux, Thinus-Blanc, & Vauclair, 2001; Sovrano, Bisazza, & Vallortigara, 2007; Vallortigara, Zanforlin, & Pasti, 1990). Yet, human possibilities for spatial cognition clearly go beyond these universal functional tendencies. In this regard, Spelke and colleagues propose that responsiveness to site-specific features, such as a particular arrangement of landmarks, coupled with the mediating effects that verbalizations contribute, begin to play a role in spatial cognition once language appears around two years of age (Hermer-Vasquez, Spelke, & Katsnelson, 1999; Shusterman & Spelke, 2005). It is at this point that cultural influences begin to make their mark, not so much by transforming core processes as by supplementing them. 4.2. A contextualist challenge to the ‘spatial cognition as core knowledge’ viewpoint An alternative body of work with a variety of species has challenged the claim of a core geometric module for spatial orientation. This work raises the possibility that the environmental information that many organisms utilize for reorientation, and in turn for wayfinding e whether that information be geometric or not e is contingent on the immediate circumstances they encounter. Illustrative of this work is a series of studies by Newcombe and her colleagues indicating that children are not predisposed to utilize particular information, such as geometric configuration, but instead the information they utilize is highly dependent on the experimental conditions in place, as well as on the individual’s history. To illustrate the former, consider the findings of Learmonth, Newcombe, and Huttenlocher (2001). Recall that evidence for geometric knowledge dominated orientation, even when some features were present, was found by Hermer and Spelke (1994) when young children were tested within a quite small (4  6 foot) enclosure. When replicating the study after doubling the enclosure size (8  12 feet), children beginning at 18 months no longer confused diagonally adjacent corners. Instead, they utilized local cues (such as a bookcase or a door) to orient. Other studies have similarly shown that in larger areas, either in a preschool or in an outdoor setting, children will utilize available features in an orientation task (Learmonth, Nadel, & Newcombe, 2002; Smith et al., 2008, respectively.) The size of the testing enclosure was also found to affect whether adults utilized geometric or feature

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information (Ratliff & Newcombe, 2008). Likewise, room size has been shown to increase the use of feature information as compared to the geometry of the enclosure in studies with chicks (Chiandetti et al., 2007) and with rats (Maes, Fontanari, & Regolin, 2009). Findings such as these are consistent with Cheng’s (2008) later reassessment, claiming that use of geometric information was not “obligatory” across species. Whether or not geometric information serves as the basis for reorientation is proposed to be contingent, in part, on the conditions the individual faces. Moreover, the organism’s prior history has been shown to influence which type of information is utilized (see Twyman & Newcombe, 2009). In some cases, prior training within an experiment has influenced whether participants will later rely on geometric information, featural information, or an integration of both in an orientation task. These effects have been demonstrated both with young children (Twyman, Friedman, & Spetch, 2007) and with adults (Ratliff & Newcombe, 2008). Likewise, training has been shown to affect later performance in pigeons (Kelly, Spetch, & Heth, 1998). These contrasting patterns of findings showing, on the one hand, the dominance of geometric information and presumably the ‘obligatory’ function of a geometric module, and on the other hand, the utilization of available information are reminiscent of somewhat different bodies of research on spatial cognition that appeared a few decades ago: infants’ use of egocentric (bodycentered) or allocentric (objective) frames of reference (Acredolo, 1978, 1979), and investigations of the A-not-B problem (Thelen & Smith, 1994). In both cases, the role of contingent information in the setting offered an alternative, and arguably preferrable explanation for what were initially claims that located explanatory variables solely within the individual. But in addition to the immediate circumstances of the setting, are there other factors that may shed light on the apparent use of configurational understanding in very young children? One other possibility is suggested by the animal spatial cognition literature. In their excellent review Twyman and Newcombe (2009) raise the question of whether the initial findings on the reliance on geometric information by animals comes from laboratory reared organisms housed since birth in rectilinear-shaped enclosures. In support of this possibility, they cite two studies that examined orientation strategies of wild-caught birds (two species of chickadees). In neither study did the use of geometric information dominate the search patterns of the wild-caught samples (Gray, Bloomfield, Ferrey, Spetch, & Sturdy, 2005, as cited in Batty, Bloomfield, Spetch, & Sturdy, 2009; Twyman & Newcombe, 2009). More controlled studies of possible effects of rearing conditions come from investigations in which organisms raised in circular environments were compared to others reared in rectilinear enclosures. Brown, Spetch, and Hurd (2007) found that fish (Convict cichlids) reared in circular tanks for four months were more responsive during training trials to featural information than were those reared in rectilinear tanks. Also, when featural and geometric information were both present, the fish reared in circular environments utilized featural information for reorientation, while those reared in rectilinear enclosures relied on geometric information. A similar pattern of results was also found with mice reared in circular versus rectilinear enclosures (Twyman, Newcombe, & Gould, 2009). In contrast, an investigation with chicks, who have a comparatively shorter period of developmental immaturity than fish, found that geometric information dominated choice behavior (Chiandetti & Vallortigara, 2008, as cited in Twyman & Newcombe, 2009). Although far more research along these lines is needed, these studies point beyond the immediate circumstances of the testing situation to the effects of rearing conditions on problem-solving. Another way of stating this point is that the developmental (ontogenetic) history an individual organism brings to any

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situation, especially organisms with a long period of neurological immaturity, may result in sensitizing them to particular environmental information and to the development of one set of skills when orientation challenges arise. How might we evaluate this claim with respect to human populations? Might there not be common experiences broadly shared by children within a particular cultural tradition that differ from traditions characteristic of other cultures? Let us pursue these questions along two lines of inquiry. First, nearly all of the human participants in research such as that cited above come from North American and Western European samples. Are there some commonalities among the developmental histories of these samples that may play a role in development of an individual’s configurational knowledge, and comparatively, do we see similar patterns of spatial cognition in non-Western cultures? Second, what is the relationship between thinking in configurational terms and the development of maps as tools for navigation in Western cultures? 5. Spatial cognition considered in a sociocultural context The initial studies that were reviewed above focused specifically on the cognitive capabilities of the research participants, but with insufficient attention paid to testing context and to the history of the individuals being tested. These are not exactly oversights if one is working from an interactionist perspective. Drawing a conceptual distinction, as interactionist approaches do, between the environment, on the one hand, and the individual, on the other, encourages a tendency to allow so-called ‘contextual factors’ to slip out of the focus frame. When that happens, seemingly precocious performance can often be attributed to propensities “in” the individual, e that is, attributed to underlying competencies e rather than looking closely at performance-in-context. The second set of studies that did consider performance-in-context signal an important corrective to that line of thought. Still, they represent only a first step. As the investigations of the impact of rearing conditions on performance indicate, the developmental history of the individual organism may well matter a great deal; and this is precisely what one would expect if the environment is viewed as playing a constitutive role in development. For this reason, in the case of our own species, which has an especially long period of immaturity, processes operating in the present need much closer scrutiny in the light of early experience and socioculturalehistorical practices. Ethnographic investigations of navigation and way-finding can afford us an opportunity to examine these issues. 5.1. Spatial cognition in non-Western cultures6 5.1.1. Haijjom of Namibia The Bushmen of Namibia are known in southern African hunting circles as having exceptional tracking skills which they demonstrate without the use of maps. The skills are commonly attributed to be ‘instinctive’ in origin among this ethnic group. Widlok (1997) has found that there is some merit to the claims about their skill level, at least, in his extensive field work among these peoples. He tested a group of men and women in the bush for their accuracy in pointing at distant unseen features, and compared their performance to GPS readings. Their accuracy was remarkably high, although not quite as accurate as legend would have it. There was also more variability than expected, and surprisingly, women outperformed men even though it is the men who do the hunting and tracking in their society. This gender difference seems to

6

The following summaries were adapted from Heft (2012b).

reduce the likelihood that such first-hand experiences are major factors in explaining the group’s exceptional orientation skills. Another finding that would appear to rule out the primacy of such experiences is that participants often could point accurately in the direction of places they had never been! If individual experience tracking and hunting did not seem to explain these skills fully, might the women be, in some sense, biologically superior in spatial reasoning? Before opting for yet another ‘black box’ explanation, let us introduce a social factor. Widlok attributes much of this skill to ‘topographical gossip.’ Widlok noted that individuals frequently pointed in the direction of places in the course of daily conversation. He writes: “The ubiquity of pointing and topographical gossip in Hai//om communication suggests that orientation skills . are constituted through prolonged social interaction.” (p. 321). Moreover, there are “several sets of socially shared and (at times) negotiated categories” that speakers draw on, as well as shared references to particular topological regions and the groups that inhabited them. In other words, the layout of the immediate area, and even more distant places, is part of the fabric of social discourse in the community. It is striking that when Widlok compared some of these designations to ethnographic data collected over 70 years earlier, they largely remained the same over time even in the absence of map use in the community. This stability over time was maintained, apparently, through processes of social transmission across generations. But did the Hai//om develop ‘cognitive maps’ of the region from these sources? Widlok found little support for this supposition. The references that are used do not form a complete, interconnected set of locations. Instead, and crucially, individuals’ knowledge of locations did not seem to function independently of goal-directed action. “[T]he main activity is that of establishing goals which, as a side effect, yield spatial truths that are primarily about life histories, access to resources, or exchange relations” (p. 324, emphasis added). In other words, survey knowledge of ‘space’ is, at best, incidental to the daily activities of a group of individuals living in a particular place. Rather then there being a somewhat well-articulated cognitive map that is common among individuals, directional references to be used in an encounter appear to be established between individuals at the time and in context of the actions being discussed or planned. That is, it seems that the ‘spatial network’ is generated on an ad hoc basis e their knowledge is situated e while drawing on some socially understood references. This is very remote from anything resembling a cognitive map or a posited semi-permanent mental representation. Moreover, to conceptualize this knowledge as being cognitive in any domain-specific (modular) sense is misleading. The geographical knowledge of the Hai//om is embedded in the social fabric of life. “[I]n most cases it is a matter, not primarily of getting somewhere geographically but of getting somewhere socially, in that one attempts to meet a certain person, to collect a certain fruit, or do a certain job” (p. 324, emphasis added). 5.1.2. Inuit of the Canadian Artic The Inuit of the Nunavut region near Baffin Island rely on hunting and fishing to sustain their way of life, and they routinely travel considerable distances over what is snow and ice-covered terrain for much of the year. During their short summer months, the trails used for this essential travel disappear with the snow melt, and each fall, new trails need to be reestablished. Remarkably, the new trails follow the lines of travel from the previous year, just as they have done so with slight modification since at least the early 1800’s when visitors first recorded the movements of this region’s indigenous people (Aporta, 2004, 2009). The Inuits of this region travel without maps. On occasion, an ‘ephemeral map’ might be drawn out in the snow or ice, but these instances are exceedingly rare. How then are the networks of trails

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long traveled by sled, now with snowmobiles, recreated each year? Aporta (2009) shows that the course of the trails is woven into narratives of previous trips that are shared between individuals and across generations. Still, discourse is rarely focused solely on the route itself. Indeed, as we saw with the Haijjom, travel itself is not thought about merely in instrumental terms e as a way of getting from one place to another. Travel is central to the identity and social life of this society. “The network of trails was connected to people’s sense of identity, as moving was for the Inuit part of life” (Aporta, 2009). Also, because of the semi-nomadic life that the Inuit have historically led, the trails have served a vital social function. Trails rarely are the shortest link between destinations but “usually go through fertile places, across or around lakes, valleys, or open water (on the sea ice) where fish, caribou, and sea mammals can be procured” (p. 10). And it is along the trails where much social interaction occurs, including the sharing of information about fish and game at other points along the trail networks, about travel conditions, and news concerning life events in the dispersed community, such as births, marriages, and deaths. The way-finding information that is woven into retellings of prior trips seems to be related mostly to features that are to be encountered along the way with little indication that these recountings involve survey representations. The trails to be followed are presented as itineraries composed of features to be encountered along the way. Moreover, this is socially mediated navigation in the sense that the trails are sustained through sociocultural processes of communication and teaching. That the same trails are recreated each fall when the snows arrive, and the fact of their recurrence over at least two centuries, testifies to the fact of their social-ecological character. 5.1.3. Micronesian navigators The exceptional and distinctive navigation system of the Caroline islanders of Micronesian has been examined in considerable detail by Gladwin (1970), Lewis (1976), and Hutchins (1995, 2005). These analyses are well known to most spatial cognition researchers, and for this reason, I offer here only a brief sketch. What is initially most striking in the case of the Micronesian islanders is their regular trips on outrigger canoes across hundreds of miles of open water during which they are usually out of sight of land. They carry out these lengthy trips without navigational aids such as maps, charts, or compasses. And yet what to Western eyes is nearly miraculous appears to be quite routine following an apprenticeship for the Micronesians. Without minimizing their accomplishments, we should note that the environment that they navigate is certainly far richer in information for them as inhabitants of the area than it would be for someone visiting from afar. No doubt to an inexperienced eye, the seascape would appear lacking in any regular structure. For the experienced inhabitant of this region, the environment is sufficiently differentiated in stable ways to provide some structure, from differences in water color due to changing depths, distinctive swell patterns from nearby (yet unseen) islands, and birds hovering around those islands7 But what is especially noteworthy about the Caroline Islanders is the rather elaborate dynamic system of navigation they have developed in relation to one of these environmental regularities, namely, ‘star paths.’

7 Montello (1995) refers to the navigational practices that exploit these environmental features as characteristic of “expertise differences, not culturally caused differences” (p. 489). But it is clear from studies of development within sociocultural contexts, that cultural differences and expertise differences are not readily distinguishable (Greenfield, 2004; Lave, 1988; Rogoff, 1991, 2003).

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Specific stars rise at the same points on the eastern horizon on successive nights, trace an arc or ‘star path’ across the dome of the sky, and set at certain points in the west. Collectively, the star paths trace out a dynamic reference system that can be used to maintain on on-going course of direction and to keep track of distances traveled. This does not involve taking a bearing from a fixed point as one might with a compass or map, but a dynamic reference system that is coordinated with on-going action (see Hutchins, 1995, for a detailed description). This celestial navigational system is clearly socially mediated. It takes considerable training for the islanders to learn this system. Like the knowledge of the Hai//om and the Inuit, the celestial system of the Micronesians is transmitted mostly by means of an oral tradition. Most importantly, the celestial system is well suited to local circumstances where surface features are comparatively fewer in number than on land, and mostly absent at night. Given the distances that are covered on open water, making camp for the night is not an option. 5.1.4. Aboriginals of Western and Central Australia The way-finding skills of Australian aboriginals are legendary (Chatwin, 1988), and Lewis (1976) has provided among of the richest ethnographies of these accounts of their adeptness in travel. Although these peoples, when queried, often attributed their skills to knowledge carried around ‘in my head,’ Lewis goes to great lengths to emphasize the degree to which functional knowledge and cultural systems of belief are deeply intertwined within the social life of the groups he studied. What he is referring to here is the traditional Aboriginal belief that the Ancients dreamed the world into existence and that they laid down tracks through the vast terrain of Australia through song. Although for our purposes we may wish to abstract the geographical knowledge possessed by the aboriginals from their cultural system, doing so provides an incomplete understanding of what it is they know. Lewis’ observations revealed “a landscape that was vivified in sacred myth” (p. 252); and we can get a glimpse of what Lewis experienced from the following account of a camp where the group stopped for the night. The Pintupi sang the Dreaming of every rock outcrop, creek bed, or plain, hour after hour, all day as we drove through their ‘country.’ The major Dreamings were sung by the campfires until everyone fell asleep, the Malu Tjukurpa [a specific path] taking two evenings to sing during which no note-taking, taperecording or photography was permitted. (p. 276) Three points are worth noting about Lewis’ account. First, knowledge for way-finding is not solely an individual affair, but it is sustained through social discourse and cultural practices. Second, the sacredness of the songs, as evidenced by prohibitions on writing or recording, indicates that this knowledge is viewed by them as being more than merely utilitarian. The songs that mark paths of travel are embedded in an elaborate mythology to which all manner of cultural practices, including art and rituals, are joined. Indeed, the interweaving of mythology and landscape might well establish an intimacy with a fairly hostile set of circumstances that cannot be achieved through abstract reasoning alone. Third, the fact that “cultural memory” is sustained in song is quite common in many cultures (Rubin, 1997). Song may be especially well suited for way-finding purposes because of the temporal structure of paths through the environment (Heft, 1996, 2012b). Aboriginal ‘songlines’ would seem to be tied to a stable stream of landscape features that are real and directly confronted in the course of travel. They are part of a much wider array of “topographical gossip” (p. 274) that has great navigational utility. The interweaving of paths of locomotion and cultural practices are not unique to this culture. Tuck-Po (2008) reports that among

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the Batek of Malaysia, paths are more than abstract tracings or configurations of the landscape: “Paths are social phenomena and are remembered in relation to social events” (p. 26). Likewise, Legat (2008) describes the trails used by the Dene of the Artic regions of western Canada as being tied to tribal and personal narratives, what she calls “walking stories.” (p. 35). 5.2. Summing up What can we conclude from these summaries of four ethnographic studies of spatial cognition? In these traditional societies at least, the social domain and the experience of the landscape are not wholly separable (Ingold, 2008; Ingold & Vergunst, 2008). Indeed, spatial knowledge seems almost incidental to daily activities and social practices in these instances. Further, the stability of this knowledge across generations, and in the absence of maps or other material artifacts, testifies to its place in a social matrix. A question, of course, is whether such social dimensions of way-finding knowledge are solely the case with traditional societies, or might we find such influences in modern Western traditions? 6. Maps and ‘space’ in Western sociocultural history The preceding ethnographic data, taken in combination with the laboratory experiments described above, suggest that the navigational and orientation practices and knowledge that exist within any culture are contingent on the environmental character of local conditions and on the sociocultural history of the culture. Owing to the materiality of the earth and the properties attendant to its surfaces, as well as the embodied nature of experience (Gibson, 1979), there will be commonalities shared among the experience of most local conditions, and that fact can mask the contingent and contextually-embedded features of spatial knowledge. Apart from presence of properties of landscape that may be common to a wide range of locales and that, as a matter of course, are involved in early cognitive development, is there something characteristic about Western cultural history that might have recently led to our taking Euclidean reasoning and configurational knowledge as springing from our biological nature? The previous discussion should prompt us to reflect on the forms of environmental knowledge that Westerners e and Western researchers e often take to be universal. Map use in support of navigation is not unique to a Western tradition. Reports of map use appeared occasionally in the previously cited ethnographies of the Inuits and the Australian aborigines. However, these latter maps were invariably of an ephemeral nature, being drawn superficially in snow or on dirt surfaces on a particular occasion. Because such maps are generated in the course of conversation, Ingold (2007) has proposed, quite reasonably in my opinion, that they are more an act of gesturing in support of verbal explanation than the production of an artifact that will exist outside of social discourse. Like a gesture they are not intended to last any longer than the individual encounter. But in the Western tradition, maps secure a much more stable role in individuals’ and societies’ relationships to landscapes and seascapes. What differs between the cultures just considered above and the West is a particular sociocultural history. Although maps of a pictorial nature in Western intellectual history can be traced at least to the 3rd century B.C., there is little evidence that maps were developed for navigational uses until at least the 13th century, and these were produced expressly to support travel on the sea. These early navigational maps, portolani, provided rough outlines of coastlines and locations of ports based on prior travels e no doubt, a compilation of experiences among individuals and groups over time (Crosby, 1997; Monmonier, 2004). That is to say, they were products of social exchange and collective effort. In addition, they

commonly contained markings (compass courses) that would enable the sailor to coordinate compass readings. But lacking a projection system, they were accurate for only short distances. Map-making advanced when projection systems from antiquity (e.g., Ptolemy’s Geographia) were reintroduced into the West in the 14th century. Not coincidentally, this was a time when European nations sought to expand economic resources and political power through extensive navigation over the seas. The development of the Mercator map projection in the 16th century, that represents constant course directions as straight lines, was invaluable for long distance nautical travel (Monmonier, 2004). Hence, this technique served a prized instrumental function. Closer to home, boundaries between European nation states were regularly contested and redrawn following conflict and negotiation. Skillful map-making become an essential tool for extending and maintaining positions of power in the new Modern Era. Moreover, it was not until the 18th century that overhead maps of cities began to replace more pictorially-fashioned oblique views of cities that preserved some of the landscape and building forms that could be seen from eye-level (Elliott, 1987, as cited in Davies & Uttal, 2007). Likewise, the concept of three-dimensional “space” developed gradually in the late Middle Ages. Prior to the 14th century, spatial location in European thinking (as opposed to distance) mostly reflected a position in a hierarchical value system, with heaven above and hell below; whereas three dimensional space as a value-free, quantitative system to describe distances from some point of origin was a product of Renaissance thought (Mumford, 1934). The shift can be seen in a variety of forms, perhaps most obviously in the visual arts where height as well as size which once symbolized the significance of forms later became quantitatively scaled dimensions captured through techniques of pictorial representation (Gombrich, 1960). Differences between locations and size cease to be indicative of relative value on maps supporting of navigation, but instead are reduced to relative distance and size. And as was the case with map-making, quantitative conceptualizations of space served sociopolitical purposes. Widlok (2008) points out: “[T] he cartographic grid of longitude and latitude is not an abstract and apolitical convention but has informed how colonial forces organized space, delimited the land and divided it” (p. 58). In summary, the reappearance in the West of Ptolemaic coordinate mapping and the development of three-dimensional Cartesian space as a container for natural events emerge from the confluence of several lines of development, from the artistic and mathematical to the commercial and political. And by the 18th century, as we saw in Kant’s philosophy, three-dimensional space ceases to be viewed as a convention and is taken for an a priori of human thought, and maps with Mercator projections are commonly taken to be the facsimile of the world. By merging these two lines of sociocultural history e map making and conceptions of space e our cultural tradition is provided with a very powerful way of thinking about environments for navigational purposes. What results is an abstract framework that, among other things, makes it possible to adopt a point of view that is not normally attainable for a terrestrial organism, namely, a view of the earth’s surface as seen from ‘above’, as if it were a cartographic map. More generally, this all too brief account suggests that styles of thinking sometimes presented in the recent literature as characteristic of species functioning, when viewed in the context of a sociocultural history, are social conventions that have proven to be useful for the purposes of a particular group of people facing specific local conditions and shared social goals. Material artifacts that we are exposed to in daily life, interwoven with particular patterns of discourse, structure how we think about any number of immediate problems that we confront (Hutchins, 2005; Stigler, 1984).

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7. Maps as representations and as tools for thinking Prompted principally by the Vygotskian tradition, psychologists have begun to recognize that tools can function as more than an aid for carrying out some task. They can also function as a platform structuring thinking and problem-solving. For example, while travelers can use a compass to determine cardinal directions, the operations of the compass itself can become a ‘conceptual tool’ for thinking about the environment with respect to cardinal directions independent of the compass. Likewise, in the process of developing maps for navigational and surveying purposes, these tools can take on a new metacognitive function beyond that of offering a visual representation of coastlines and other features of the earth’s surface (Uttal, 2000). In short, it is not uncommon for a tool to become a conceptual model to be used for reflecting on what it indexes (Hutchins, 2005). Thus, material tools that have been designed to assist an individual or group in addressing some concrete problem situation can themselves subsequently transform thinking in similar contexts. Both Dewey and Vygotsky were emphatic that material tools routinely shift from being solely ‘tools for the hand’ to become ‘tools for thought.’ Young children in Western societies, at least, are exposed to a variety of map-like representations from very early ages. Pictorial representations of villages and towns from ‘above’ are not uncommon in books expressly written for the young, even nonreaders, and simple models of sites (e.g., houses, buildings) are among some of the play sets to which they are exposed. Moreover, exposure to map-like representations through various social media are surely commonplace. Likewise, although the extent to which young children hear older children and adults employing ‘spatial’ references in everyday discourse is unknown at this time, it would be rather surprising if such references were not found to be frequently woven into everyday conversations in cultures, such as ours, where maps and spatial discourse are pervasive. Research supporting this possibility is sorely needed, and some evidence in this regard has been reported in Davies and Uttal (2007). Children’s (7e10 years of age) knowledge of the layout of their neighborhood was evaluated though the use of various tasks. In addition, interviews were conducted with parents to obtain estimates of the extent to which their children had been exposed to maps at home or at school. Although this is at best an approximate measure, I would suggest that it is also a very conservative one considering how common map-like representations are everyday experience. The researchers found that on a task where children were asked to point in the direction of local, yet presently out of sight features, those children who had more prior experience with maps performed with greater accuracy. Notably, this experiential factor was at least as significant a predictor of performance as was age. From this perspective, it is seems naïve to assume that children, much less adults, enter into experiments on spatial cognition without a prior history from living in a map saturated culture. By five years of age, children can use simple maps as tools in a problemsolving task (e.g., Blades & Spencer, 1990). However, routinely using map-like thinking in problem-solving is a different matter. Davies and Uttal (2007) point to several factors that might make it difficult for children to recognize the utility of using map-derived knowledge as a tool for thinking when they are faced with navigational challenges in spite of map-reading abilities. If we add to this account the emerging evidence that by eight years of age children also begin to evince the culture’s ways of talking about spatial relations (Gentner, 2007; Haun, Rapold, Call, Janzen, & Levinson, 2006), the case for the influence of the developmental context on environmental cognition grows even stronger. Conceptual confusion ensues when researchers do not consider that the ‘cognitive map,’ taken to be a mental representation of

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spatial configuration, is a by-product of the interaction of tool use and discourse, stemming from concrete engagement with local environmental conditions over development, rather than arising from psychological processes taken independently of the environment. In the present case, configurational understanding that grows out of using map-like thinking as a means of conceptualizing environmental layout in the face of particular everyday, pragmatic challenges is wrongly taken to be foundational to environmental cognition generally and universally. In short, the claim being advanced here is that configurational thinking in Euclideancartographic fashion ultimately stems from the socio-historical development of maps, and the spatial discourse surrounding them, to solve everyday, practical problems. Over time these cultural artifacts then become part of the developmental context, or as Laland, Odling-Smee, and Feldman (2001) put it, the “ecological inheritance” of the developing individual in a transactional sense. Presupposing the appearance of configurational thinking in any but the most rudimentary form may reflect investigators’ employment of a cultural tool as a metaphor for “how the mind works” without appreciating that a metaphor is being employed. The history of scientific thought is replete with instances of material artifacts employed metaphorically as tools for thinking, from clockwork models of the solar system to computer models of human problem-solving. Once these tools for thinking become assimilated as standard conventions, they typically become invisible to their users and those who apply these metaphors as models. However, these conventions can show up in the case of errors in thinking, revealing how the influence of underlying ‘tools for thought’ can structure thinking. Consider the well-known findings of Hirtle and Jonides (1985) that participants consistently judge Toronto to be north of Seattle, and Los Angeles to be west of Reno, Nevada. Neither of those judgments is correct, and the bases for these errors become clear once we consult a map of North America. The partitioning due to national and state borders that is exhibited on most cartographic maps can structure thinking. An anticipated objection to the claim that configurational thinking is a product of map-making rather than the grounds for it is that surely maps could not have been “cut from whole cloth.” In other words, there must be some cognitive foundation for mapping in place for it to happen. The elegant research of Foo, Warren, Duchon, and Tarr (2005) on path integration and configurational reasoning may offer a glimpse of these foundations. The standard path integration task requires participants to walk from one landmark (A) to another (B), and then from B to a different landmark (C) e in effect, walking two legs of a triangle. The accuracy of path integration is then evaluated by having participants identify a short-cut by attempting to walk, or in some cases point, to C from A. Accurately doing so would indicate that path integration processes operated while walking the first two legs, possibly resulted in metric, Euclidean configurational awareness of the overall layout. Using virtual reality, Foo, et al. failed to find support for a claim that accurate configurational knowledge results from path integration. Short-cut attempts (walking from C to A) resulted in very approximate and variable performance. However, some “very coarse and possibly non-Euclidean” awareness did emerge from path integration. Awareness of such non-Euclidean relations could be utilized to formulate crude and at best approximate, though still inaccurate, ‘short-cuts.’ Although Euclidean configurational knowledge did not result from path integration (even among a sample of young adults surely much exposed to maps), this research did suggest the emergence of a bare bones structure that could eventuate into configurational knowledge by drawing on additional resources, such as cultural artifacts of both a material and a linguistic nature. In other words, from such beginnings e if indeed they are beginnings in a developmental sense e patterns of thinking arising out of long

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exposure to maps and the discourse of Euclidean spatial reasoning, which begin in early childhood, might function to bootstrap subsequent efforts to understand the layout of the environment (also see Uttal, 2000). In short, thinking in terms of maps and threedimensional ‘container’ space develops out of an individual’s practices within a particular sociocultural context. Still, I maintain that while such tools for thinking do participate in navigation, they need not play a role in way-finding on any particular occasion. I am most definitely not proposing that these tools for thinking structure all way-finding practices. Organisms often find their way without relying on navigational tools or on the cognitive residua of those tools. Heft (1996, 2012b) has proposed that wayfinding along familiar, previously traveled paths be viewed as a process of skilled performance over time Perceptioneaction processes in such cases involve the detection of information over time that is specific to the surface layout of a particular path of travel. As such, way-finding runs smoothly unless the individual encounters some alteration in the path that habitually has been revealed through perceptioneaction processes. At that point, the individual may momentarily “step outside of the flow” of perceptioneaction, perhaps to utilize a conceptual aid (cognitive map) or a material artifact (cartographic map), in an effort “to get back on track.” These tools are products of the individual’s immersion in a sociocultural context where maps and map-related social discourse are present, and they are applied as the need arises e that is, pragmatically rather than routinely and invariably regardless of circumstances. 8. Conclusion: psychology, culture, and transactionism This analysis of the cognitive map concept was intended to extend beyond the context of environmental cognition research. It was intended to serve as a case study for evaluating the place of culture in environmental psychology. Let us now briefly return to the issues with which we began this essay. The interactionist worldview, as we have seen, treats the individual as a bounded, semi-independent entity subjected primarily to influences located at a remove from its boundaries. From this perspective, the existing research literature in environmental cognition holds either that configurational knowledge of some environment might be acquired in the course of exploration and development, or alternatively, it might be based on innate biological modes of cognitive operation, or some combination of these approaches. In either case, cognitive maps and configurational thinking are then solely viewed as an individual affair. The analysis offered here affords a third possibility, and one that does not rest on interactionist presuppositions. Moreover, and perhaps of most value to environmental psychologists, this alternative takes environment as playing a formative role in psychological development. From a transactionist perspective, the psychological domain is constituted by multiple factors both biological and environmental (Altman & Rogoff, 1987; Heft, 2012a). As proposed above, ‘inter-level’ influences, such as those anchored in sociocultural history, are not causal but constitutive. Often overlooked among the environmental factors that play a formative role in cognitive development are cultural artifacts and social discourse. Because development is a dynamic, epigenetic process, particular ‘tools for thinking’, such as thinking about the environment in Euclidean geometric, map-like terms, become constituted in the course of individualeenvironment transactions. This ‘case study’ of the cognitive map concept in psychology is intended to show how we may begin to think about the relationship between cultural influences and the individual from a dynamic, transactional perspective. From this point of view, culture is not simply ‘added-on’ to a biological base, and hence ‘merely’ a contextual factor that can be peeled away to reveal underlying core psychological processes. Sociocultural influences participate

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