Cognition

Term of psychology, relative to knowledge processes (acquisition, storage, use and processing of information), used in geography of perception, or of representations, or of experienced space; relative to an individual or collective representation of space, in function of a knowledge or of a practice. The cognitive map (or mental map) designates either this mental representation, either a drawing, made by the surveyed person or reconstituted by the surveyor. These maps show distortions with respect to real space, known spaces are amplified, with numerous markers, while less known or rarely visited spaces are underestimated.