Benjamin Kuipers. 2001.
The skeleton in the cognitive map: a computational hypothesis.
In J. Peponis, J. Wineman and S. Bafna (Eds.), Space Syntax:
Proceedings of the Third International Symposium, Ann Arbor:
A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning,
University of Michigan, pages 10.1--10.7.
Experts seem to find routes in a complex environment by finding a
connection from the starting place to a subset of major paths --- the
``skeleton'' --- then moving within the skeleton to the neighborhood
of the destination, making a final connection to the destination. We
present a computational hypothesis to account for the skeleton as an
emergent phenomenon, arising from the interaction of three factors.
(1) The topological map is represented as a bipartite graph of places
and paths, where a path is an extended one-dimensional description of
an ordered set of places. (2) Travel through the environment allows
the traveler to incrementally accumulate topological relationships,
including the relation of a place to a path serving as a dividing
boundary separating two regions. (3) A bounding path is often a
natural subgoal during way-finding search, meaning that paths rich in
boundary relations are likely to appear in routes, which means they
are likely to acquire more boundary relations. This positive-feedback
loop leads to an oligarchy of paths rich in boundary relations.
We propose computational and empirical tests for this hypothesis.
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