What Is a Mental Map

Taking the word mental and map into context the first thing that comes to mind is that mental means something abstract. When you place map into a location and geographical perspective you come to understand that maybe a mental map is a map that you have a photographic image of in terms of landmarks and visual objects. For instance, I would think that if one were to think of Africa, they may remember just the main shape of the continent and the other stereotypical facts that relate to African people in the middle of pastures and mountains. Although it may not be an actual address in terms of latitude and longitude it is somewhat the image of painted pictures we have made to construct a center place. So really a mental map isn't a precise or absolute location based map, but rather images that we as society conjure of specific words that trigger socially constructed images.

A mental map is the very subject of relative location which is kept in our memory. Now one isn't to say that these images are made up of nothing somewhere along the line we must have been conditionalized in the area we are thinking of. There is no mental map of Uruguay in my mind at this moment because although I may have heard of the place I truly have never seen a picture of it or had it described to me by anyone else. There are mental maps that are based around the perceptions and descriptions of what we have heard from others and those usually lead us to determine the actual quality of a location. For instance, in my mind when I think of Africa the first thing that comes to mind is a bunch of tribes whose lack of education and modernity make them inferior to my mind set.

However, when you see documentaries conducted in such places as Africa you see that a lot of people there who happen to be African are well-educated and live according to a different standard from that which I was aware of. As stated before the other maps are conjured in our mind from an actual written map that we have seen and studied in order to relatively establish some sort of map. When we say Italy for instance we have seen on map that is looks like a boot so in my mind I know that it has a certain shape and is some south or north in Europe.

"A mental map can be defined as an internal representation of a place based on memory. There are two types of maps. The first type of mental maps is those formed from our personal experiences. The second type of mental maps is those