what is a mental map

A mental map is a persons point-of-view perception of their area of interaction. It represents a persons perception of their surroundings and is generated subconsciously by the brain to help understand what the environment looks like and how to interact with it. Mental maps are an outcome of the field of behavioral geography and are considered one of the first studies that intersected geographical settings with human action. The most prominent contribution and study of mental maps was in the writings of Kevin Lynch, who used simple sketches of maps created from memory of an urban area to reveal five elements of the city: nodes, edges, districts, paths, and landmarks. Mental maps visually represent the perceptions of a given area, region, or space and can be used to predict individual decision making and spatial selection, as well as evaluate routing and navigation. Mental maps should include elements and features to help orient and navigate within the boundaries of a defined space, such as roads, buildings, hallways, furniture, landmarks, and other features. Mental maps can also show how much a person knows or thinks they know about an area, and can reveal knowledge gaps or contain information that isnt factual. Mental mapping is a product of a series of psychological processes that register, code, store, then call to mind and decode all information on our everyday spatial environment. When a researcher does mental mapping, they are interested in mapping maps, that is, collecting and interpreting mental maps in our minds. Mental mapping is an interdisciplinary research area that emerged in the 1960s, almost simultaneously in different fields, such as geography, psychology, linguistics, and social sciences, primarily cultural anthropology.