Cognitive Maps - The Different Maps of Your Intelligent Mind

Edward Tolman created the term Cognitive maps, and since then this term has been studied within the fields of psychology, education, architecture, city planning and development, and archeology.

Cognitive maps are also known as the maps or scripts of your mind that take in references, recall, decode and code information, and make associations as well as solve problems. It can be understood as a series of psychological transitions that aid in processing information. It is like a mental processing computer that creates maps in your mind.

Moreover, they are the mind maps that we all use to construct and build our spatial intelligence and process our information; therefore allowing our mind to visualize images so that we can reduce our cognitive space and recall what we have retained in learning. The act of memory is considered a non-spatial aspect of our minds, and is a method that has been used on students dating back to students of Rome who needed to learn how to memorize speeches.

To use this process of the map of the mind, one could take in an image of a physical location. This entails a student going through a room and taking in the memory of the objects and sequence of it and then when needing to recall words they go back through the room and identify the objects that were placed there. This kind of memorization is also known as a photographic memory, a very appropriate term for visual imagery recall for the map of the mind.

Over the decades many educators have come to a place where they have accepted that there are different types of learning styles, which means that individuals have various methods of learning with their given mental maps. Such styles are auditory, visual, kinetic (hands on) abstract and concrete. With this present day knowledge, the testing and teaching techniques for IQ assessment and learning have changed quite dramatically.

In this day of education, many teachers have become aware that their students may have different mental maps that need specific training in order to learn effectually. This has resulted in many companies coming up with their own mind mapper tools.