More than a list: What outdoor free listings of landscape categories reveal about commonsense geographic concepts and memory search strategies

Abstract

Categorization is central to abstraction from real world geographic phenomena to computational representations, and as such has been the subject of considerable research. We report on one common approach, free listing, in an outdoor setting and explore terms elicited in response to the question ‘What is there for you in a landscape?’. We collected term lists, and explanations for the strategies used from 89 participants in two mountain and one parkland setting. We analyzed results not only using term frequency, but also by cognitive saliency, exploring list structures, and building aggregated networks visualizing links between terms. We observed memory search strategies, such as exploiting and switching semantic clusters in our data, with participants using for example not only the local setting to start clusters, but also memories of familiar landscapes to switch between clusters. Our results reveal that simple free listing experiments can help us understand how categories are linked, and also highlight ways in which landscapes are conceptualized.