Spatial Concept Perspectives

We have gathered ~300 excerpts from published works about fundamental spatial concept terms. These have been cross-referenced with the concept lexicon appearing on the left. Those terms were drawn from the U.S.National Science Education Standards (NSES 1996) for topic areas B - Physical Science, C - Life Science, D - Earth and Space Science, as well as from the 1994 U.S. Geography Teaching Standards for grades 9-12. Those standards can be browsed here.

spatial concept terms

disciplinary perspectives on "landmark"

landmark

Landmarks are used to structure routes and organize neighborhoods (p 13). Human directions to get from A to B, for example, are typically a string of actions at turning points, denoted by landmarks, as in 'go down Main to the Post Office, take a right on OakĀ (p 2). Many navigable environments can be loosely schematized as landmarks and links, places and paths (p 10). The components of a perspective, then are a landmark to be located, a referent, a frame of reference, a viewpoint, and terms of reference (p 10).

Psychology

Tversky (2005)

Functional Significance of Visuospatial Representations

landmark

Landmarks are frequently perceptually salient, familiar and/or functionally important entities...the only functionally vital attribute for a landmark is that it should be unlikely to move (p 14). Two types of landmarks can be distinguished: landmarks that are treated as points (e.g. an elm tree in left field) and landmarks seen as constituting a region (e.g. left field itself) (p 15).

Psychology

Newcombe and Huttenlocher (2000)

Making Space