Aspects of spatial cognition, specifically spatial skills, are strongly correlated with interest and success in STEM courses and STEM-related professions. Because growth in STEM-related industries is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, it is important to develop evidence-based and theoretically grounded methods and interventions that can help train relevant spatial skills. In this ...

The ability to process spatial information is crucial for various tasks as diverse as, navigation, planning layouts, and managing abstract concepts. Accordingly, considerable effort has been spent on understanding how spatial cognition is realized in the human mind. These endeavors have, however, so far virtually neglected one important aspect of spatial cognition, namely control. In this contr...

Recent advances in the understanding of spatial cognition are reviewed, focusing on memory for locations in large-scale space and on those advances inspired by single-unit recording and lesion studies in animals. Spatial memory appears to be supported by multiple parallel representations, including egocentric and allocentric representations, and those updated to accommodate self-motion. The eff...

The cognitive representation of a return path is a rather unexplored topic including different issues, e.g., perception, mental imagery, mental spatial processing, and language. We here investigated the return path with landmarks located on different positions (optimal, suboptimal). Participants learned a total of 24 routes and had to produce the return paths (N=20). In a second experiment the ...

In common-interest spatial-dispersion games the agents’ common goal is to choose distinct locations. We experimentally investigate the role of cognition in such games and compare it with the role of cognition in spatial matching games. In our setup cognition matters because agents may be differentially aware of the dispersion opportunities that are created by the history of the game. We ask whe...

Spatial navigation can be based on different, i.e. the egoand theallocentric reference frames. For successful orientation in real environmentsboth frames of reference are active and can be used dependent on therequirements of the task. To separate brain electrical activity dependent on theuse of the egocentric and the allocentric reference frame we investigated spatialnaviga...

How much about our interactions with—and experience of—our world can be deduced from basic principles? This paper reviews recent attempts to understand the self-organised behaviour of embodied agents, like ourselves, as satisfying basic imperatives for sustained exchanges with the environment. In brief, one simple driving force appears to explain many aspects of perception, action and the perce...

Structures in Spatial Cognition Christopher Habel and Carola Eschenbach University of Hamburg Abstract. The importance of studying spatial cognition in cognitive science is enforced by the fact that the applicability of spatial concepts and spatial expressions is not limited to the spatial domain. We claim that common structures underlying both concrete, physical space and other domains are the...

All our lives, we interact with the space around us, whether we are finding our way to a remote cabana in an exotic tropical isle or reaching for a ripe mango on the tree beside the cabana or finding a comfortable position in the hammock to snack after the journey. Each of these natural situations is experienced differently, and as a consequence, each is conceptualized differently. Our knowledg...