Kevin Lynch and the GPS: Predicting the Culture of Navigation in 1960 - Failed Architecture
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The cognitive map and The Image of the City
In 1948, psychologist Edward C. Tolman made his laboratory rats navigate an elaborate maze. It was a classic experimental design with two groups of rats running two trials each: in the first trial, only one of the two groups would receive a reward for completing the maze; in the second trial, both groups would receive the reward. In line with expectations, the reward-group outperformed the delayed reward-group during the first trial. In the second trial, however, the rats in the delayed reward-group were the champions.
How did the rats in this group pull this off? They were not acting from a stimulus-response relationship, as they had received no reward at the end of the first trial. Tolman inferred that they must have developed some form of internal representation of the territory, a ‘cognitive map’ that allowed them to navigate the maze as quickly as they did.
Tolman’s study became an instant classic. It signaled a shift from behaviorism to cognitivism, from pairing of stimulus and response to goal-directed processing of information. The concept of the cognitive map (a mental representation of survey knowledge) became widespread.
