Cognitive Invariants of Geographic Event Conceptualization: What Matters and What Refines?

Behavioral experiments addressing the conceptualization of geographic events are few and far between. Our research seeks to address this deficiency by developing an experimental framework on the conceptualization of movement patterns. In this paper, we report on a critical experiment that is designed to shed light on the question of cognitively salient invariants in such conceptualization. Invariants have been identified as being critical to human information processing, particularly for the processing of dynamic information. In our experiment, we systematically address cognitive invariants of one class of geographic events: single entity movement patterns. To this end, we designed 72 animated icons that depict the movement patterns of hurricanes around two invariants: size difference and topological equivalence class movement patterns endpoints. While the endpoint hypothesis, put forth by Regier (2007), claims a particular focus of human cognition to ending relations of events, other ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: GISCIENCE
• Authors: Alexander Klippel, Rui Li, Frank Hardisty, Chris Weaver
• Keywords: Geographic Events, GIS, GISCIENCE 2010, Movement Patterns, Topological Equivalence