Diagrams in the mind: Visual or spatial?

Abstract

Diagrams are known to be powerful forms of knowledge representation both for spatial and non-spatial problems. For human reasoners their power results from their immediate accessibility through visual perception. This talk focuses on the mental side of diagrammatic representations. People coping with visual or spatial tasks use spatio-analogical mental representations. These representations are - like external diagrams - characterized by their structural correspondence with the state of affairs they represent. Usually, two forms of mental spatio-analogical representations are distinguished: spatial mental models are abstract representations that only focus on specific structural aspects of spatial relationships, whereas visual mental images are much more complete and more detailed representations. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.