HOW COGNITIVE MAPS ARE LEARNED AND REMEMBERED

This paper draws on research from geography and psychology to explain how people learn and remember both reference and thematic maps. The re view describes how prior knowledge about maps interacts with task dema nds to produce mental representations that satisfy the constraints of the human information processing system. The paper then examines resea rch that has used maps to assist people in answering questions about ' 'What happened there'' and concludes with some suggestions on directio ns for future research.