Over the past few months I’ve been thinking about cognitive maps and spatial cognition, terms largely associated with cognitive psychology and neuroscience. You might have heard about the study where researchers found changes in the brains of London taxi drivers, after spending years memorizing a mental maps of London’s busy? That’s the kind of research frequently done by cognitive psychologists. But spatial knowledge is relevant to other fields too, like urban planning, architecture and game design to name a few. My latest research focus is on trying to build cognitive maps of real world places prior to going there, through virtual architectural replicas in video game-like interfaces. Imagine you and I spent a couple hours a week exploring an open world video game recreation of Paris or Tokyo. Upon first arriving in the city, I’m curious how well we would be able to navigate the city. Better than had we spent the same amount of time strictly looking at maps or Google 360 street view? I’m also specifically interested in first-person vs third-person camera views, and how different vantage points effect the formation and retrieval of these cognitive maps.

My main research question is this: How do different camera perspectives in virtual replicas of real-world spaces influence the formation of cognitive maps and subsequently affect real-world spatial agency and navigation in said spaces?

This is the focus of my practice-based PhD research, and what I’ll be working on over the coming years. If anyone would like to talk about this stuff or even to collaborate, I’d love to hear from you.