CONCEPT
Cognitive Maps
Tversky's extension of the navigational concept into the organization of knowledge itself — the spatial metaphors through which humans structure domains they have never physically traversed.
Edward Tolman coined the term cognitive map in 1948 to describe how rats navigate mazes using internal spatial representations rather than stimulus-response chains. Tversky's research extended the concept far beyond navigation: we organize knowledge domains through spatial metaphors, locate ideas in conceptual space, and reason about abstract relationships using the same cognitive machinery that guides physical movement. The scientist who speaks of a "field" of inquiry, the writer who "steps back" from an argument, the engineer who "drills down" into a problem — all are deploying cognitive maps to navigate abstract territories through spatial metaphor.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Cognitive maps are not literal maps. Tversky's research shows they are more accurately called cognitive collages: piecemeal, distorted, schematized assemblies of spatial information that nonetheless support effective reasoning. We remember routes as sequences of landmarks and turns rather than as geometrically accurate layouts. We organize social networks as proximity rather than precise coordinates. We structure knowledge domains through containment relations, adjacency, and hierarchy — spatial primitives that the