Our experience of the spatial world is a unitary one; we perceive objects and layouts, we remember them and act on them, and we can even talk about them with ease. Despite this impression of seamlessness, spatial representations in human adults appear to be specialized in domain-dependent manner, engaging different properties and computational mechanisms for different functions. In this book, the authors present evidence that this domain-specific specialization in cognitive function emerges early in development and is reflected in patterns of breakdown that occur under genetic defect. The authors focus on spatial representation in children and adults with Williams syndrome, a relatively rare genetic syndrome that gives rise to an unusual profile of severely impaired spatial representation together with spared language. Results from a variety of spatial domains -- including object representation, motion perception, action, navigation, and spatial language -- appear to display a strikingly uneven profile of sparing and deficit within spatial representations, consistent with the idea that specialization of function drives development and breakdown. These findings raise a crucial question: Can specific genes target specific aspects of cognitive structure? Looking deeper into the patterns of performance across spatial domains, the book explores the notion that understanding patterns of normal development across domains is crucial to understanding unusual development. Using insights from normal development, the authors propose a speculative hypothesis that explains the emergence of the William syndrome profile, and how complex cognitive outcomes can arise from the deletion of a small set of genes.

Thinking about space is thinking about spatial things. The table is on the carpet; hence the carpet is under the table. The vase is in the box; hence the box is not in the vase. But what does it mean for an object to be somewhere? How are objects tied to the space they occupy? In this book Roberto Casati and Achille C. Varzi address some of the fundamental issues in the philosophy of spatial representation. Their starting point is an analysis of the interplay betwen mereology (the study of part/whole relations), topology (the study of spatial continuity and comapctness) and the theory of spatial location proper. This leads to a unified framework for spatial representation understood quite broadly as a theory of the representation of spatial entities. The framework is then tested against some classical metaphysical questions such as: Are parts essential to their whole? Is spatial co-location a sufficient criterion of identity? What (if anything) distinguishes material objects from events and other spatial entities? The concluding chapters deal with applications to topics as diverse as the logical analysis of movement and the semantics of maps.

Argues for an interactionist approach to spatial development that incorporates and integrates essential insights of the Piaget, Nativist, and Vygotskyan approaches.

With the widespread use of GIS, multi-scale representation has become an important issue in the realm of spatial data handling. However, no book to date has systematically tackled the different aspects of this discipline. Emphasizing map generalization, Algorithmic Foundation of Multi-Scale Spatial Representation addresses the mathematical basis of

Spatial Representation presents original, specially written essays by leading psychologists and philosophers on a fascinating set of topics at the intersection of these two disciplines. The essays are arranged into five sections, each of which reflects a central area of research into spatial cognition, and opens with a short introduction by the editors, designed to facilitate cross-disciplinary reading.

Despite our impression of a seamless spatial world, mature human spatial knowledge is composed of sub-systems, each specialized. This book uses the case of Williams syndrome — a rare genetic deficit - to argue for specialization of function in both normal and unusual development. The evidence suggests a speculative hypothesis linking the genetic deficit to changes in the timing of emergence for different sub-systems. More broadly, the book shows the complexity of spatial cognition, its genetic correlates, and realization in the brain.

This book is devoted to the development of adequate spatial representations for robot motion planning. Drawing upon advanced heuristic techniques from AI and computational geometry, the authors introduce a general model for spatial representation of physical objects. This model is then applied to two key problems in intelligent robotics: collision detection and motion planning. In addition, the application to actual robot arms is kept always in mind, instead of dealing with simplified models. This monograph is built upon Angel del Pobil's PhD thesis which was selected as the winner of the 1992 Award of the Spanish Royal Academy of Doctors.

This book demonstrates bene?ts of abstract and qualitative reasoning that have not received much attention in the context of autonomous robotics before. Bremen, Christian Freksa December 2007 Director of the SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition Preface This book addresses spatial representations and reasoning techniques for - bile robot mapping, providing an analysis of fundamental representations and processes involved. A spatial representation based on shape information is p- posed and shape analysis techniques are developed to tackle the correspondence problem in robot mapping. A general mathematical formulation is presented to provide the formal ground for an e?cient matching of con?gurations of objects. This book is a slightly revised version of my doctoral thesis submitted to the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Bremen, Germany. Manycontributeto the developmentofa dissertation,butsomeofthemstand out. Christian Freksa, I thank you for supporting and encouraging my work, for introducing me to interdisciplinary work, for giving me the freedom to develop this dissertation, and for providing an enjoyable atmosphere to work in. Longin Jan Latecki, thank you for countless in-depth discussions helping me to develop andtopositionmywork,forthefruitfulcollaboration,andformakingaresearch stay possible that has been very valuable to me. I thank the research groups in Bremen and Philadelphia for helpful discussions and feedback, in particular Jan Oliver Wallgrun. ̈ I also thank Kai-Florian Richter, Sven Bertel, and Lutz Frommberger for feedback on this work. Robert Ross, thank you for helping to proof-read this dissertation.

Coping with spatial expressions in a plausible manner is a crucial problem in a number of research fields, specifically cognitive science, artificial intelligence, psychology, and linguistics. This volume contains a set of theoretical analyses as well as accounts of applications which deal with the problems of representing and processing spatial expressions. These include dialogue understanding using mental images; interfaces to CAD and multi-media systems, such as natural language querying of photographic databases; speech-driven design and assembly; machine translation systems; spatial queries for Geographic Information Systems; and systems which generate spatial descriptions on the basis of maps, cognitive maps, or other spatial representations, such as intelligent vehicle navigation systems. Though there have been many different approaches to the representation and processing of spatial expressions, most existing computational characterizations have so far been restricted to particularly narrow problem domains, usually specific spatial contexts determined by overall system goals. To date, artificial intelligence research in this field has rarely taken advantage of language and spatial cognition studies carried out by the cognitive science community. One of the fundamental aims of this book is to bring together research from both disciplines in the belief that artificial intelligence has much to gain from an appreciation of cognitive theories.

In recent years the development of spatial referencing techniques in com puter-based information systems has enormously increased the opportuni ties that exist for the treatment and presentation of both point and interaction data. The extent of this increase has drawn attention to the need for special aggregation and clustering procedures to be developed which enable data to be grouped in an efficient way for analytical pur poses with a minimum loss of detail. In the case of interaction data, economy of representation is particularly important as the analysis is further complicated by the two-way directionality that is inherent in each data set. Procedural rules of this kind are needed not only for descriptive analy sis and spatial accounting but also for hypothesis testing and the develop ment of operational models of spatial interaction. Yet the importance of spatial representation in this kind of research has only recently been fully understood. The first generation of urban development models that were developed in Europe and North America during the 1960's often treated matters of zoning system specification very casually, even though in some cases this imposed severe limits on the interpretation of their findings and it was not until the Centre for Environmental Studies/Cheshire project (Barras et al. , 1971) that a serious attempt was made to put forward general principles which could be used as guidelines in future work.