Environmental Psychology

COGNITIVE MAPPING OF PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS. METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS BASED ON THEORIES OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MIND.

TSOUKALA, Kyriaki; University of Thessaloniki,

Cognitive maps as produced from the interaction of the individual with the physical environment have become an important research topic over the last decades. The systems that have been created for the interpretation of the function, form and contents of cognitive maps are directed by either (a) the excessive reinforcement of the role of one of the members of the above rel ation and, in consequence, the loss or weakening of the other member, or, (b) the abolition of this difference and inequality, which entails a well-balanced role of equal weight for the members of this relation. In this case the system of interactions is formed by mediating elements, such as the cultural, social and financial elements, and the individual 's sex, knowl edge, experience and activity. Through these elements the buily environment is re-constructed. In certain theories, these elements make their appearance within the logic of causality in the form of determinants, while in others, within the functionalistic rather than interactive logic. This paper deals with tne interpretation system associated with the social interactionalism. This is the epistimological approach moving around the concepts of Vygotsky's historical -cultural theory and other approaches from the area of Activity Theory. The activity and signs of the built space function as mediating instances in the interaction between the subject and the physical environment and result in an interior product, the representation or subjective image of the built space, and an exterior one, the recoded space through its subjectivisation. This approach and the concepts and the methods entailed in it have never been applied in environmental psychology. This paper aims at raising various issues as regards the function of concepts and methodological tools of this approach when applied on the analysis of phenomena observed in the individual's spatial behaviour in a built environment