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What we know and understand about our surroundings influences our evaluations of and behaviors in the physical environment. In addition, our reasons for using places, our goals and personal plans, bias the manner in which we acquire and store knowledge of places. The extent to which places afford the goals and plans we bring to them also affects environmental assessments. How much we like a place is colored by how well it meets certain functional objectives. Yet scholarly analysis of each of these topics has proceeded largely in isolation. The principal objective of this volume is to promote more thinking and analysis about the integration of these three, heretofore largely distinct areas of scholarly inquiry-namely environmental cognition, environmental assessment, and decision making and action in real-world situations. We are not attempting a broad theoretical integration across the many realms of human-environment studies as outlined for example in The Handbook of Environmental Psychology (Stokols & Altman, 1987). Throughout the present volume there is a distinctly cognitive bias, emphasizing the role of cognition as it influences assessment and action rather than studying how action or assessment might impact cognition. This cognitive perspective reflects the editors’ own intellectual training (experimental psychology) and also mirrors the current predominant view within each of the three areas of inquiry we investigate. However, as we discuss throughout this volume, this cognitive perspective may detract from a fuller understanding of how and in what way people interrelate with their physical surroundings (see also Saegert & Winkel, 1990, for a sociocultural critique of the cognitive perspective in environmental psychology). Furthermore, we focus our analysis of cognition, assessment, and action at the individual level rather than aggregating responses intended to characterize the environment at a societal or group level. Given that the principal objective of this volume is to promote integration across three areas of scholarship that have operated largely in isolation from one another, we begin by first describing each of these three main areas of inquiry. This is followed by a brief analysis of some preliminary attempts at integration. We conclude with a description of how the present volume is organized.

Environmental assessment is a basic tool in numerous professions and occupations. Anyone whose business it is to modify an existing situation must necessarily take into account what is already there. The existing situation might be a region, a site, a building, a room, or even a bookshelf: in any event, it constitutes a physical setting that must be understood in terms of what is there. The assessment of the physical environment is equally central to occupations that require movement through space. Pilots, navigators, and taxi drivers depend on such spatial considerations, as do individuals whose livelihood stems from sports, both team and individual. The centrality of environmental assessment, however, is not limited to such occupational contexts. Assessment of the physical environment is a pervasive process. It is an ongoing, usually nonconscious, ingredient of wakefulness. Only when the opportunity for sensory input is removed is this activity temporarily halted. In fact, impairment to any single sense modality leads to the realization of how much one depended on that source of input to assess the physical world. The good things as well as the bad, the interesting and the mundane, the important and the trivial, and even the neutral ones all rely on an assessment of the environment. Given the broad range of issues that this topic encompasses it is not surprising that there is a considerable literature focusing on different kinds of settings, on legal mandates, on methods, and on application. This chapter does not attempt to do justice to all these concerns. In very general terms, I have chosen to explore the following domains: (1) what is important, (2) what is valued, (3) by whom, and (4) for what? These questions, however, are so interrelated that they do not lend themselves to a systematic discussion. Instead, the chapter is organized into two major topics: Description and Prediction. The section on description examines the perception or experience of the environment. Two key concepts discussed in that section are categorization and the question of what is important, both inherent aspects of description.

Environmental knowledge is acquired by interacting with, or experiencing, different environments. The interaction may be direct and active, as would be the case when a person lives in, travels through, or otherwise physically experiences a particular environment. Interaction may also take place, however, by accessing different sources of information including such things as photos, slides, movies, videos, paintings, or other visual representations, as well as haptically perceived information such as might be acquired from tactual maps, table models, or different types of sensing devices. Information abstracted from these many sources is stored in long-term memory as part of a general knowledge structure. As the need arises, such information is processed to provide knowledge of location, distribution, pattern, dispersion, connectivity, configuration, and other properties, which assist in preparing travel plans and activating movement. There are of course many “environments,” and it makes little sense to refer to “the environment.” Even the “physical” environment encompasses the markedly dissimilar worlds of landforms, marine, surface and groundwater domains, vegetation, atmosphere, weather, and climate. Add to that the complexities of other external realities such as the built and transformed landscapes of human occupance, and it makes even less sense to regard them as one. Often these domains compete with each other via invasion and succession procedures (e.g., the invasion of agricultural land by urban uses; the successful invasion of inner city residential areas by expansion of commerce, business, and industry; the invasion of natural grasslands by domestic plants and animals), while at other times they exist in harmony. Perhaps the one common feature is that they are assumed to exist independently of mind—that is, they are “external” to mind. Assuming this to be so, the concept of “environmental cognition” can be examined. In this chapter, we will first discuss the basic spatial elements or components that allow both differentiation and clustering of phenomena found in large- and small-scale environments. This is followed by discussion of the components of an environmental knowledge structure, highlighting both individual and integrated components of knowledge, and emphasizing spatial characteristics.

Research in environmental cognition has been fragmented into at least three related but separate areas that reflect different purposes, viewpoints, and disciplinary conventions (Evans and Gärling, this volume). One tradition has focused on predicting spatial choices such as choosing shops or modes of transportation (Timmermans, this volume). A second tradition, driven in part by the necessity to make value judgments about settings to be spared or modified in development, has focused on the assessment of environments, and particularly on the visual quality of natural settings (R. Kaplan, this volume). Finally, a third tradition, coming principally from psychology and geography, has focused on exploring the content and structure of mental representations of the environment (Golledge, this volume). In this chapter we discuss these three approaches to environmental cognition and examine how they can contribute to each other and to a more general view of action, evaluation, and cognition. We focus specifically on the linkages between the physical environment, cognitive mediators, and outcomes such as wayfinding, decision making, and other actions. We pay particular attention to how the environment and mediators are represented. This chapter is organized into several sections. After the introduction, we review the chapters in this volume by Timmermans, R. Kaplan, and Golledge. Unlike much previous work in evaluation and in spatial decision making, all three authors discuss the cognitive processes that mediate between environment and behavior. The following section considers alternative approaches to cognitive mediators such as mental models and schemas. Following this, we briefly examine how the physical setting has been represented in environmental cognition. We then turn to computational models that attempt to provide rigorous definitions of both environment and mediator. Next, we propose our own preliminary schema-based model of wayfinding. Finally, we suggest some questions for further research. In artificial intelligence research a distinction is made between two alternative approaches to theory: “scruffy” and “neat” (Luger & Stubblefield, 1989). Whereas researchers following both traditions are interested in simulating human cognitive behavior, the scruffies primarily focus on producing a computational system where the outcomes mimic human behavior.

Environmental assessment is closely related to the impact environments make on people. Places that induce anxiety and stress in childhood may be regarded with dismay later in life. The relationship between people and their environments may be conceived in physiological, psychological, or ethnological terms, or, which is often the case, by concepts borrowed from these three fields simultaneously. The description of the relationship can be kept either at a molecular or a molar level. The former may be exemplified by the effect of noise on blood pressure, while the latter may be the home's impact on the developing child. The present chapter constitutes an attempt to formulate a model at the molar level of human-environment interaction, largely based on knowledge from the neuropsychological discipline. For the sake of clarity I will first discuss some of the basic concepts employed in contemporary model building in neuropsychology. I will then suggest that these concepts may be brought together into what I have called the basic emotional process. I will support this construct by results from previous research on emotion, and also demonstrate the remarkable congruence between the physiological and semantic branches of this research. Using the emotional process as a focus, a model of human-environment interaction will be proposed, which describes how the person may feel and act under the influence of the physical and social environment, mediated by his or her individual reaction tendencies. The presentation will be illustrated by reference to field studies and experiments carried out by our group since the mid-1960s. Ample use will also be made of studies carried out elsewhere. However, the chapter does not, in the conventional sense, constitute a review of the existing literature on environmental assessment. Instead, it presents one view on assessment, which naturally leads to a specific organization of the existing evidence. One advantage of the proposed model is that it has the capacity to incorporate recent findings of the neurosciences in a detailed and precise way. The model may also be developed and tested further in this direction. Another advantage is that the model has proven to be a useful tool in the environmental design process.

This chapter deals with the question of how adults process information about large-scale physical features and their spatial relations during navigation between places. The presentation is based on the presumption that single acts of cognition are comparatively unimportant in real-life travel. Accordingly, sequential relations between acts are emphasized, which is the reason for the term event in the title. In general, ways of seeing how spatial cognition is organized in time and space should further the search for connections between the fields of spatial cognition, environmental assessment and action. However, the latter prospect is beyond the scope of this chapter. The aim-to make explicit the sequence aspect of cognitive acts in several problem areas of spatial cognition—is pursued in a spirit of inductive analysis in that a number of act sequences are discussed as examples of important spatial cognition events. The approach is first described in broad outline. Processing of large-scale spatial information may entail different theoretical perspectives on levels of mental functioning. Basic mechanisms and operations that underlie the occurrence of cognitive acts represent one level, being the main focus of contemporary theory construction and model building. Further, cognitive acts are reflected in conscious activity and self-consciousness, which represent a second level. Finally, a third level emerges to the extent that cognitive acts are reliably ordered continuously in time and space. Common categories of acts in large-scale spatial cognition are perceptual identification, encoding, recognition, and recall of environmental information, judgments of topological, projective, and metric spatial relations, spatial inference, visual-spatial imagery, and spatial choice. Detailed processing underlying these cognitive acts is progressively unraveled by means of refined task paradigms, deductive reasoning, mathematics, and procedures for controlling subjects’ behavioral and mental activities. This kind of knowledge is sparse in the field of large-scale spatial cognition (Pick, 1985). Independent variables in experiments have been related as often to issues of development, the structure of location information in cognitive maps, methodology, or application as to the nature of processing per se (cf. Evans, 1980). In the long run, theory about underlying processing is indispensible for any of these concerns, including the event approach to be presented here.

The study of how people make decisions has long been dominated by the economic man or rationality model. In recent years researchers have extended the study of decision making into the spatial context. Given the pervasive role of the rationality model it was not surprising to see reliance on it in this new domain as well (Golledge & Timmermans, 1987; Timmermans, this volume). There are, however, at least two reasons why one might have hoped for a broader perspective. First, given its obvious kinship to the area of environmental cognition, research on spatial decision making could have reflected the concern for cognitive structure central to the wayfinding literature. Second, the rationality model has increasingly been the subject of searching questions and criticism. Cracks have been appearing in the once near-monolithic support for this model. A number of psychologists have been quite articulate about what they see as serious deficiencies in this approach (Einhorn & Hogarth, 1985; Hermstein & Mazur, 1987; Kruglanski & Ajzen, 1983; Simon, 1957; Wallach & Wallach, 1983). Even economists have expressed serious reservations (Bell & Kristol, 1981; Earl, 1983a; Eichner, 1983; Kuttner, 1985; Lutz, 1987). Decision theorists have not been insensitive to these concerns; many modifications have been proposed (see Jungermann, 1983, for an extensive review). If there is a consensus among them, it is far from obvious. In the absence of such a consensus, many stalwart investigators (including economists and planners) continue within the comfortable and familiar confines of the classical framework. In the discussion that follows, the term “rationality” will be used to refer to the classical rationality position that still endures in many quarters, and that still serves as a center of gravity for the multitude of dissatisfied revisionists. In its simplest form, the position can be summarized as stating that people have perfect knowledge and that they strive to maximize their gains. A most interesting analysis of the increasingly obvious inadequacy of the rationality model and of how planners are coping with this state of affairs is provided by E.R. Alexander (1984). The picture he paints is essentially one of a paradigm decline, with heroic efforts on the part of practitioners to carry on nonetheless.

The field of environmental psychology appears to maintain three rather different habitats, that have not so far been formed into a coherent ecology. One is the area from which this book drew its central inspiration. That is the study of environmental cognition. The processes by which people perceive and know their physical surroundings. As made clear and presented in some detail in Chapter 1, this research has its roots in two interrelated traditions: the “cognitive mapping” tradition that is usually traced to the work of Lynch (1960), and the “environmental meaning” tradition that grew out of the studies of Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (1956), especially as they were developed by Berlyne (1971). In many ways the great significance of Kaplan and Kaplan's (1978) contribution, developed in Chapter 9, is the way Kaplan has integrated these two strands and thereby enriched our perspectives on environmental knowing. At the heart of this domain is the cognitive psychology belief that knowledge of the world is integrally linked to the perception of it. Neisser (1976) has done most to elaborate this view and argue for epistemic perception as the starting point for understanding human transactions with the world. In providing this emphasis the laboratory-based, experimental tradition out of which it is derived is never completely forgotten. The transactions are with simple, concrete entities that exist outside the laboratory but could be readily simulated within it. This inheritance from an earlier generation of perceptual theorists is an important one, to which I shall return. I see it as the major reason why prospects for theoretical integration, even though they have been opened up by fruitful developments in cognitive theory, still escape us. The second distinct habitat in environmental psychology has far weaker theoretical roots and a less well-established vocabulary. It used to be called “building appraisal” (Canter, 1966), it then became the more alliterative “environmental evaluation” (Zube, 1980), and now is drifting into “assessment.” The origins of this domain are in the pragmatic requests of architects, planners, and environmental policy makers for information on how good their decisions have been.

Effective research application has always been an important but illusive goal in environment-behavior research. However, the fact that we have not been entirely successful in realizing this goal should not be a source of particular surprise or dismay. Problems of effective research utilization are not at all unique to environment-behavior studies; they are common across disciplines and professions that endeavor to link knowledge and action (Weisman, 1983). Such difficulties are a reflection of fundamentally different ideas of what constitutes effective research application. Assessment of the applicability of the models of psychological processes presented by BÖÖk, Küller, and S. Kaplan (this volume), therefore, is not a simple or entirely straightforward task. It is necessary to first consider the quite different yet useful ways in which application has been defined. After this discussion of application, each of the models in this section will be briefly reviewed, and some conclusions drawn regarding their applicability to environmental planning and design. Throughout this chapter, particular emphasis is placed on the need to confront the physical environment in theoretically meaningful terms and the ways in which this can advance our ability to link environmental knowledge and action. Application may be viewed in many different ways. For some practitioners, research utilization is defined in terms of “instrumental application” (Weiss, 1980). This straightforward view focuses on “the direct application of a research finding in a project, program, policy or administrative decision” (Seidel, 1985, p. 50). Such instrumental application, however, is not the only nor necessarily the most significant avenue for research application. Almost 30 years ago, in a particularly thoughtful article, policy analyst Max Millikan explored the relationship of knowledge and action. Decision makers, Millikan suggested, “commit their elementary error in an inductive fallacy—the assumption that the solution of any problem will be advanced by the simple collection of fact.” “This is easiest to observe,” Millikan noted, “in government circles, where research is considered as identical with ‘intelligence’” (1959, p. 163).