Cognitive maps in humans

People also tend to apply heuristics on their internal representation of the environment.
There are 5 different types of heuristics:

1. Angles
   People seem to have a tendency to remember angles that are close to 90 degrees as exactly 90 degrees. This causes problems since the angles in a triangle then do not sum to 180 degrees.
2. Curves
   People tend to remember curves (e.g. a river) as more symmetrical than they really are.
3. Spatial Arrangements
   People often make assumptions about the layout of the rooms in a building. Houses with standard architecture can be remembered faster.
4. Rotations
   Lengthy shapes are often oriented in such a way, that the axes are horizontal and vertical.
5. Alignment
   People like aligning things. For example, many people think that the United States and Europe are at the same vertical position on the globe.

	This figure shows an extended perception-action cycle of a cognitive map. The dotted circle represents the perceptual cycle. It is embedded in a cycle of exploration and information pickup (see Ulric Neisser [4] and Interesting links).