EXPLORING SPATIAL THOUGHT

This article reports on an exploratory investigation of the different ways in which people think about geographical space and formulate answ ers to cognitive mapping tasks. To try to discover the strategies of s patial thought used in completing a task, designed to measure configur ational knowledge (knowledge of the associations between and relative locations of places), individuals were interviewed while they undertoo k two of foul different tests. This was followed by a debriefing inter view where respondents could express their feelings and judgments conc erning each test. Such an introspective methodology, although being di fficult from which to draw any definitive conclusions, does allow an i nsight into the strategies used in spatial thought and can provide use ful information concerning how traditional cognitive mapping research should develop. Many strategies of spatial thought were found to exist . These can be divided into common strategies that concern geographica l knowledge (e.g., imagining a map), common task strategies that are g eneral problem-solving strategies usable over several tests (e.g., eli mination to narrow choices), and task-specific strategies constrained by the nature of a particular task (e.g., working out distance and dir ection between A and B, B and C to determine A to C). In addition, by comparing quantitative results with the qualitative interviews it was possible to examine whether the adoption of certain strategies led to more accurate spatial products (externalized representation of knowled ge).