心象地图是驻留在记忆中的关于地理世界空间特征认知结果的表达,具有如下特征:空间表达的非均一性、内容选取的主观性、空间定位的非确定性、度量特征上的非精确性.心象地图的可视化需要由特殊的图形形式来承担,经过分析提出了适宜这一表达特征的3种可视化技术,包括面向道路网认知表达的路网构架图、专题属性空间定位信息认知表达的面域拓扑图、虚拟网络空间导航认知的赛伯网络图.基于地图的定义,对这3种可视化形式度量特征进行了讨论,认为它们在有序量尺度上具有可度量特征.

Spatial cognition dealswith the cognition of spatial properties of the world, including location, size, dis-\ntance, direction, shape, pattern, movement, and inter-object relations. Mentalmap is the representation resultof spatial\ncognition about such spatial characteristics of the real geographic world. Ithas the following properties: heterogeneously\nrepresenting space, subjectively selecting objects, uncertainly locating entity, and inaccuratelymeasuring scale. Themen-\ntalmap consists ofdiscrete pieces, such as landmarks, routes and regions, which is determined by physica,l perceptua,l\nor conceptualboundaries. For the content organization, the pieces havemultiple levelswithout complete connection re-\nvealed by patterns of errors. In order to represent and visualize this kind ofmap, special visualization methods are re-\nquired rather than the traditionalmap. This study investigates some qualitative visualization approaches presenting three\nmethods to representmentalmaps focused on different contents. They are the schematic map representing road network\ncognition, the cartogrammap representing the area distribution information cognition and the cybermap representing the to-\npological cyberspace cognition.\nThe schematicmap is a linear abstractions of functionalnetworks including roads, railways, shipping lanes and foot-\npaths. The network representation clarifies the operational relationships and describes the topology in smi plified form. The\nschematicmap suits for representing network cognition because itcloselymmi ics thewaywe store the road cognition infor-\nmation aboutourphysicalenvironment in ourmemory. The orientation and distance representation is coarse butthe relative connection relationship is accurate. This kind of qualitative visualization focuses on the topological relationship which is\nmi portant in our quickly searching for the navigation information. In ourmindwe also use the smi plemap to representand\nto justify the spatialorientation and distance. In contrast, the traditional cartographic roadmap isdifficult to get the navi-\ngation although it is accurate.\nThe cartogram, also called value-by-areamap is a type ofgraphic thatdepicts attributes ofgeographic objects as the\nobject s area. The value-by-areamapping technique encodes themapped data in a smi ple and efficientmanner. The attrib-\nute can be a country spopulation, its literacy rate, orGDP. In ourmemory the mi portantattribute usually gets a large mi-\nage patch and the spatial relation distributes in a topological connection rather than accurate connection. We don tcare the\nexact spatial relation, object shape and orientation. The cartogram converts the background data to a visualization repre-\nsentation so that the attribute information is easy to recognize. So the cartogrammap is adaptable to representattribute in-\nformation cognition.\nThe cyberspace isdefined as a computer-generated landscape, the virtualspace ofa globalcomputernetwork, linking\nall people, computer and sources of various information in the world through which one could navigate. As the virtual\nspace cognition too,l the cybermap provides the userwith quickways to accesswhathewants, to navigate the hitpaths.\nIt focuses on the topological information representation in virtual space cognition and navigation. This kind ofmap can be\nused to represent the cognition information aboutvirtual space.\nThree qualitative representationmaps have the same property that concerns on the topological information to describe\nthe coarse cognition result in ourmind. From the perspective of themap definition, the paper examines themeasurement\ncharacteristics and proves that they havemeasurementproperties atorder scale leve.l