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Mapmaker Maps are essential while navigating through the environment. For instance, you might stop to consult a street map while traveling through Manhattan. Other maps are less concrete, however. Abstract spatial maps, for example, allow you to walk through a dark but familiar bedroom without bumping into the walls and furniture. This ability to mentally organize space is referred to as cognitive mapping (Hirtle & Heidron, 1993). People tend to form cognitive maps from an egocentric perspective (Avraamides & Sofronious, 2006). As a result, objects in the visual scene are organized with regards to distance and heading from oneself. In addition, while navigating through environments, people attempt to select optimal paths that minimize distance and travel time. This sensitivity to optimization has been observed during navigation in both actual and virtual environments (Francesca et al., 2007). Finally, humans often incorporate distal cues into cognitive maps in order to more accurately capture features of the environment (Baguley The study of cognitive maps and human navigation have influenced related fields of science. Navigational strategies observed in human performance have been applied to robotic guidance (Escrig & Toledo, 2000). Similarly, autonomous vehicles rely on increasingly sophisticated forms of mapping behavior (Pfister, 2003). In addition, the design of virtual environments and GPS navigation systems have been greatly influenced by human mapping tendencies (Gamberini & Bussolon, 2001). dTank offers a useful setting for developing and testing new computational models of navigation. The program is easy to interact with and offers a robust