Psychology homework help. Applied Reflective Questions (ARQs)
Due Date: September 27th
Points: 10 points
Purpose: Apply knowledge from Chapter 7, specifically the information on Cognitive Maps and its heuristics.
Skills You Will Use:
- Apply Cognitive concepts to everyday behavior.
- Think about the interaction between Cognitive Psychology and other disciplines. In this case we will be reflecting on how Cognitive principles can be applied to make useful maps.
Knowledge You Will Use: In this assignment you will asked to identify several cognitive map heuristics and how they relate to real world environments.
Criteria for Success:
- A short response to the prompt below that appropriately integrates the chapter concepts into their answer.
- Merely listing chapter terms without appropriate explanation or using them incorrectly can result in reduction of points.
- Draw our attention to conceptual terms used by writing them in bold.
- Student should demonstrate a thoughtful application of the concepts to the prompt below.
- An originally written response; any response that is partially or fully written by someone else may result in academic misconduct or penalties.
- No more than two or three paragraphs. Use 12pt standard font (e.g., Times New Roman, Calibri, etc.). Either double or single spaced is fine.
- Document must be Word Doc or PDF; any other format will be an automatic 0.
- Do not include the prompt or questions in your submitted document.
Prompt/questions on back…
CHAPTER 7: MAPS OF THE MIND
Cartographers are individuals who explore physical space and try to represent it in a two-dimensional image. In simpler terms, they draw maps. But have you ever looked at the types of maps these individuals draw for subway or metro routes?
The map on the left is the Washington Metro subway map, and the one on the right is what the subway routes actually look like. If you used the map on the left, you would believe a lot of those stops on the red and blue line are equal distance apart. Once you inspect the map on the right, you might realize that many stops are very clustered together towards the city’s center. These stops get significantly further apart as you head outward from the central Washington area. The real routes themselves are also not as straight and organized as the Metro map makes them seem.
Task: Use the concepts and terminology from Chapter 7’s section on Cognitive Maps to answer the following questions.
- What similarities do you see between the Washington Metro map and the way our cognitive maps represent physical space? Talk about any two specific effects that seem relevant in the example above. (6 pts)
- More importantly, why would a cartographer distort the physical environment so dramatically in his map? (4 pts)
- Compare the Metro map to what cognitive maps do. Is there a benefit to this distortion?
- What could be a downside to these map distortions?
