Standard 2: Mental Maps• Mental maps are the

spatial images that we carry inside our heads about places, peoples, and the land.

• When we hear directions to someone’s house or a particular place, our mind conjures up the streets and landmarks that will help us arrive at that place. We walk the street, or drive our car in our heads.

Mental Maps

• On the micro-level, spatially envisioning where we are going helps us understand and remember how to get there, and how to tell someone else how to arrive at a place.

• On a regional or global scale, visualizing ‘where on Earth’ places, mountains, lakes, rivers…are, helps us gain perspective of the whole, and better understand and be able to make connections about Earth systems.

These maps were made by 5th and 6th graders in Austin, Texas. They were encouraged to envision and then draw their street, and then to draw the places they liked and did not like on their street. In the picture on the right, the student drew a scary, abandoned house in fairly great detail.

HOW TO USE MENTAL MAPS

• We use mental maps on local to global scales; from envisioning a particular street, or a particular block, to envisioning a particular country’s outline when we listen to the world news at night.

• Depending on what we know about a place, our mental maps can be quite detailed, or very sparse. As we learn more about a particular place, or visit some place in our city or state, our mental maps become more detailed and accurate.

Mental Maps

• The more we learn about a place or our surroundings, the better we can imagine it or conjure it up in our minds, the better we can describe it.

• For someone who is listening to us describe a street or a place or some other feature on Earth, the more vivid a mental map becomes as we add more detail to our description.

• As we spend more time traveling the same route, or exploring or studying the same place, we will add layers of information to our description. Each time we make the same trip, we observe and take in more information that becomes part of our mental image of that place.

• Mental maps, or cognitive maps, help us organize and make sense of the world.

• We sort and compartmentalize information about places in our minds.

• We begin to develop patterns and distribution of the physical and human features on Earth.

• The map on the right is how one illustrator for the New Yorker magazine suggested that New Yorkers envision Manhattan, as compared to how they envision the rest of the United States.

HOW WE USE MENTAL MAPS

• A mental map incorporates both objective/factual information about a place or feature of Earth, as well as the subjective perceptions about that place or feature that we might have about it.

• People imagine & create maps with varying detail. For example, a well-traveled person can mentally compare and contrast places. She might describe a place in great detail, even using information such as sounds, smells, colors, humidity or dryness in the air, or any other characteristic that gives life to a place.

Mental Maps

Conversely, someone who has not traveled widely may not be able to describe a place rich with detail

Also, people who travel by car will offer different descriptions of a place, than a person who rides a bus, walks, takes a bicycle, or wheels through the streets in a wheelchair.

Modes of Transportation and Mental Maps

• For example, a person who walks to work every day may be able to describe how the smell of bread from a nearby by bakery permeates the air as you walk by.

• A walker or bicyclist might add that a particular corner is particularly treacherous, as there is no stop sign, and cars whiz past them with little regard for someone crossing the street.

• A person in a wheelchair will know which streets are accessible, and which streets or sidewalks have too many potholes to safely and effectively use.

• On the other hand, someone who rides the bus does not have to pay such close attention to those details, but instead might be able to list every store he passes on his route.

• Someone on a fast-moving train or subway might only be able to describe their route to work or home in a linear fashion, offering information about how many stops before they exit the train, or by using color descriptors such as the ‘red line’ or the ‘green line’ to give directions to another train-user.

Other factors that affect our mental map-making capabilities

• Relative level of affluence might also affect how one describes or conjures up a mental map.

• Stereotypes and prejudices might also play a role in how a mental map looks in our minds.

• Just as we might learn about a particular place or Earth feature from someone’s description of that place or feature, we will likely learn something about the person who is describing it!

The map on the left is another mental map by an artist for The New Yorker magazine.

In this map, the ‘cartographer’ is portraying how s/he perceives the city of New York culturally and demographically.

The map offers no useful information on how to arrive at a certain place, instead, its labels point out the cultural, ethnic, age, and economic... diversity of NYC.

Who do you think lives in areas of New York such as ‘Botoxia’, ‘Irate’, ‘Irant’, ‘Taxistan’, and ‘Hiphopabad’?

The power of observation and mental maps

• If geography is to be useful in creating a framework for understanding the world—past, present, and future—then coherent mental maps must take shape and become increasingly refined as students progress through their school years.

• Students should be encouraged to develop and update their mental maps to ensure that they continue to have essential knowledge of place location, place characteristics, and other information that will assist them in personal decision-making and in establishing a broad-based perception of Earth from a local to a global perspective.

• In addition, they need to understand that developing mental maps is a basic skill for everyone who wants to engage in a lifetime of geographic understanding.