Articulate spatial cognition and environmental cognition to grasp the socio-cognitive representations of space

This article is based on a body of research on spatial cognition in order to show, on the one hand, that still scattered results argue in favour of a social construction of "mental maps", and on the other hand, that it is by combining the analysis of the social meanings of geographical space (environmental cognition) with that of the topological distributions of geographical elements internalised by individuals (spatial cognition) that it is possible to account for this socialisation of cognitive mapping. The author thus questions the reasons that hinder a socio-cognitive analysis of "mental maps", whereas, moreover, cartographic representations are now widely recognised as being social constructions. He proposes to promote this articulation between spatial and environmental cognition by exploring in an interdisciplinary manner the hypothesis that the social meanings of space serve as a kind of "geographical coordinates" for cognitive representations of space.