Subject-formal Methods Based on Cognitive Maps and the Problem of Risk Due to the Human Factor

Abstract

Recently there appear more and more publications, both theoretical, and applied related to cognitive maps, though with different meanings of “cognitive map” by different authors. Contemporary cognitive map applications cover different domains: economics, medicine, foreign affairs and others. The spectrum of the problems solved spreads from conceptual modeling aimed to help individual to better structure and understand the problem, up to deriving a shared understanding of the problem, then to most typical simulation of illstructured situations optionally including their dynamics, and finally to solution of some strategic management problems. In theoretical studies related to cognitive maps we discriminate two fundamental approaches different in research aims: normative (as people should think) and descriptive (as people do think). Hereby we apply the idea suggested by A. Tversky et al. and presented in the widely known book (Bell et al., 1988) to cognitive map researches. Followers of the descriptive approach, investigating cognitive processes in people, while decision-making, refer to the concept of cognitive map1 as the internal model of person's knowledge about some situation2. This interpretation to some extent correlates with the definition from Wikipedia3, though to our opinion it would be more correct to speak about “mental representations composed as a result of a series of psychological transformations” instead of “mental processing composed of a series of psychological transformations”. In the normative approach which applied aim is to suggest people the ways of practical problem solution, cognitive maps of various kinds are proposed as normative models (in other words, as schemes or rules) for external representation of knowledge about situations (whatever the internal representation could be). In this approach the cognitive map of a concrete situation has an external form of structure consisting of elements (named concepts,