Title
Mapping the cognitive environment of fifth graders: an empirical analysis for use in environmental planning
Abstract
This study employs an experiment investigating cognitive mapping of fifth-grade children living in a remote village environment, wherein characteristics of the landscape included paths, landmarks, nodes, edges, and districts. Two aspects of analysis were salient in this study. First, important landscape characteristics and their frequency of appearance in the cognitive maps were tabulated and illustrated as a layout map. Second, inaccurate cognitive maps were structurally analyzed to account for any incompleteness, distortions, and augmentation of actual environments found in some map samples. Focus on gender differences in children's environmental cognition in terms of symbolic representation skills utilized in cognitive mapping is of special interest in this case study. Results confirm Piaget's theory that older children, aged ten or more, begin to use projective and Euclidean concepts. Furthermore, boys used a greater variety of symbols to represent a particular landscape characteristic, a cultural temple, than did the girls. Finally, we hypothesize that the `hunter---gatherer' social divisions of labor between men and women in the village's early historical social structure are consequentially related to gender discrepancies in cognitive mapping symbolic representation skills, in non-English-speaking children.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1007/s00146-013-0459-x
AI & Society
Keywords
Field
DocType
taiwan,environmental planning,public participation,cognitive mapping,participatory approach
Social psychology,Village environment,Cognitive map,Public participation,Sociology,Cognitive psychology,Knowledge management,Cognition,Division of labour,Special Interest Group,Projective test,Salient
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
29
3
1435-5655
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Hurng-Jyuhn Wang100.34
Chin-Shien Wu200.34
Yun-Yu Huang300.34
John R. Parkins400.34