Where am I? Who am I? The Relation Between Spatial Cognition, Social Cognition and Individual Differences in the Built Environment

Abstract

Knowing who we are, and where we are, are two fundamental aspects of our physical and mental experience. Although the domains of spatial and social cognition are often studied independently, a few recent areas of scholarship have explored the interactions of place and self. This fits in with increasing evidence for embodied theories of cognition, where mental processes are grounded in action and perception. Who we are might be integrated with where we are, and impact how we move through space. Individuals vary in personality, navigational strategies, and numerous cognitive and social competencies. Here we review the relation between social and spatial spheres of existence in the realms of philosophical considerations, neural and psychological representations, and evolutionary context, and how we might use the built environment to suit who we are, or how it creates who we are. In particular we investigate how two spatial reference frames, egocentric and allocentric, might transcend into the social realm. We then speculate on how environments may interact with spatial cognition. Finally, we suggest how a framework encompassing spatial and social cognition might be taken in consideration by architects and urban planners.

Anticlockwise or clockwise? A dynamic Perception-Action-Laterality model for directionality bias in visuospatial functioning

“…Surprisingly, many sporting facilities are solely designed for turning, running or racing in an anticlockwise direction, but not based on any empirical evidence of convenience for the players. The ideas proposed here might have practical implications for the design of public spaces, such as sports facilities, schools/colleges, store displays, museums, business centers, and also for the design and presentation of products on the shelves in an appealing fashion or to best enhance human performance (Proulx, Todorov, Aiken, & de Sousa, 2016). …”

Detecting peripersonal space: The promising role of ultrasonics

“…One could concern that this companion variation may simply reflect a general autonomic activity sustained by subcortical network activation, as observed in a typical startle response (in that, a stimulus approaching toward the face), being thus unrelated to PPS perturbation. Nonetheless, the motor tasks we employed require at least one or more among physical, psychological, and mental effort to be executed, depending on the hand‐to‐face distance (for purposeful or reflex actions to be eventually planned and executed), the comfort distance (for potential interactions with the experimenter within participant's PPS), judgments toward stimuli while during passive or active task—namely participant's or experimenter's hand (Ferri, Ardizzi, Ambrosecchia, & Gallese, 2013; Iachini, Coello, Frassinetti, & Ruggiero, 2014; Proulx, Todorov, Taylor Aiken, & de Sousa, 2016). Therefore, HR changes may represent a specific marker of PPS perturbation.…”

Social targets improve body-based and environment-based strategies during spatial navigation

“…This prioritization does not seem to rely on increased assigned valence or perceived salience of the targets, as indicated by the questionnaires results, but may be mediated by brain mechanism that control the focus on relevant navigational cues. Possible brain areas mediating this computation are the insula and the adjacent anterior cingulate cortex because of their involvement both in empathy and attentional prioritization (Proulx et al 2016).…”

“…Because observing a person activates embodied simulations also including posterior parietal areas (Brass et al 2000;Hommel et al 2001;Schutz-Bosbach and Prinz 2007b;Schutz-Bosbach and Prinz 2007a;Barsalou 2010;Dijkstra and Post 2015), and because it is particularly critical to estimate the correct distance between oneself and a potential opponent rather than the position of a person in an abstract, disembodied space, we hypothesized that encoding the position of a person in space increases the weight of idiothetic cues and decreases the weight of allothetic cues when both cue types are available. This links to the idea that egocentric encoding in social and spatial interactions may have a common basis (Proulx et al 2016). We also hypothesized that stronger weighting of body-based cues when the position of a person is encoded could be accompanied by facilitated learning as indicated by lower position errors, in particular, when idiothetic cues are available.…”

“…However, almost no work has been conducted on the navigational strategies employed to encode the position of a person in space. This may be because, traditionally, the fields of social cognition and spatial cognition are rather independent (Proulx et al 2016). One study investigated navigational behavior of children in a real-life environment and observed a rightward bias when children approached adults, compared to objects (Forrester et al 2014).…”