Some ways that maps and diagrams communicate

Since ancient times, people have devised cognitive artifacts to extend memo ry and ease information processing. Among them are graphics, which use elem ents and the spatial relations among them to represent worlds that are actu ally or metaphorically spatial. Maps schematize the real world in that they are two-dimensional, they omit information, they regularize, they use inco nsistent scale and perspective, and they exaggerate, fantasize, and carry m essages. With little proding, children and adults use space and spatial rel ations to represent abstract relations, temporal, quantitative, and prefere nce, in stereotyped ways, suggesting that these mappings are cognitively na tural. Graphics reflect conceptions of reality, not reality.