The main contribution of this PhD thesis is: A proposal for Student Modeling based upon Cognitive Maps. Its purpose is to anticipate the effects that a teaching-learning experience will produce on a student before its delivery. Thus, this dissertation focuses on the Student Modeling from the causal-effect perspective. Also, our approach aims to predict outcomes stemmed from teaching-learning se...

Part of the knowledge and set of beliefs of a cognitive agent are its mental models of the world and of other agents. A mental model reflects the cultural context and past experiences of an adaptive agent. In interacting with other agents, we claim that a causal mental model, i.e. a cognitive map, which might be different for each agent, adapts and changes causing coalitions to emerge. Possible...

Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) is a soft computing modelling methodology for complex systems. Beyond the mathematical formulation of the FCM theory, there was a need of developing a software tool to facilitate the implementation of FCMs. This paper describes the use of a software tool that was developed to construct FCM models. Some theoretical elements of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps are presented. Then, i...

Two experiments investigated the cognitive consequences of acquiring different aspects of a novel visual scene. Subjects were presented with map-like configurations, in which subsets of elements shared perceptual or action-related features. As observed previously, feature sharing facilitated judging the spatial relationship between elements, suggesting the integration of spatial and non-spatial...

Following a familiar route and finding a novel route in a familiar environment depend on different cognitive processes and representations. A recent study by Hartley et al. begins to identity the neural basis of route following and wayfinding in humans. Their study also raises important questions about the functions of the hippocampus.

The focus of this chapter is an examination of the relationship between cognitive maps and travel behavior in urban environments. We do this examination incrementally, beginning with clarifications of terms relating to cognitive maps, cognitive mapping and wayfinding. We then emphasize transportation-related issues such as cognizing of transportation networks, path selection, wayfinding and nav...

We present a conceptual framework for the role of the hippocampus and its afferent and efferent structures in rodent navigation. Our proposal is compatible with the behavioral, neurophysiological, anatomical, and neuropharmacological literature, and suggests a number of practical experiments that could support or refute it. We begin with a review of place cells and how the place code for an env...

Drawing on studies of humans, rodents, birds and arthropods, I show that 'cognitive maps' have been used to describe a wide variety of spatial concepts. There are, however, two main definitions. One, sensu Tolman, O'Keefe and Nadel, is that a cognitive map is a powerful memory of landmarks which allows novel short-cutting to occur. The other, sensu Gallistel, is that a cognitive map is any repr...

A cognitive map, also called a mental map, is a representation and reasoning model on causal knowledge. It is a directed, labeled and cyclic graph whose nodes represent causes or effects and whose arcs represent causal relations between these nodes such as “increases”, “decreases”, “supports”, and “disadvantages”. A cognitive map represents beliefs (knowledge) which we lay out about a given dom...

Many networks in natural and human-made systems exhibit scale-free properties and are small worlds. Now we show that people’s understanding of complex systems in their cognitive maps also follow a scale-free topology. People focus on a few attributes, relating these with many other things in the system. Many more attributes have very few connections. People use relatively short explanations to ...