Spatial Cognition and Environmental Design
My research concerns the real-world environments we live in—buildings, neighborhoods, city squares, and metropolitan regions—and the cognitive processes and skills we apply to learn the layout of those surroundings, navigate to far-off destinations, decide where to spend our time, and other such spatial and geographic tasks. Particular topics that interest me include:
- Modeling Built Environments
- "Cognitive Maps" and Spatial Knowledge
- Spatial Abilities and Individual Differences
- High-tech Tools for Science and Design
Relevant, Recent Publications and Presentations
- Dara-Abrams, D. (2008). Modeling environmental form to predict students’ spatial knowledge of a university campus. Master's thesis in the Cognition, Perception, and Cognitive Neuroscience area of the Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara.
- Dara-Abrams, D., & Hegarty, M. (2007). Learning the layout of a new building: A longitudinal, real-world study. Poster presented at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Long Beach, California, November 15-18, 2007.
- Hecht, B., Starosielski, N, & Dara-Abrams, D. (2007). Generating educational tourism narratives from Wikipedia. Paper presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 2007 Fall Symposium, Washington, D.C. , Nov. 8-11, 2007.
- Dara-Abrams, D. (2007) Modeling environmental form to predict students' spatial knowledge of a university campus. Poster presented at the Conference on Spatial Information Theory, Melbourne, Australia. September, 2007.
- Hecht, B., Dara-Abrams, D., Starosielski, N., Goldsberry, K., Dillemuth, J., & Roberts, J. (2007). Minotour: A location-aware mobile tour application that weaves a spatial tale from Wikipedia, Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, San Francisco, Apr. 17-21, 2007.
- Dara-Abrams, D. Urban form shapes spatial knowledge. Poster presented at the Spatial Cognition conference, Bremen, Germany. September, 2006.
- Dara-Abrams, D. (2006). Architecture of mind and world: How urban form influences spatial cognition. Paper in B. Hillier, C. Hölscher, R. Conroy Dalton, & A. Turner (Eds.), Space syntax and spatial cognition (Workshop at Spatial Cognition). Bremen, Germany: Universität Bremen.
- Dara-Abrams, D. (2006). Ground truthing space syntax. Paper in K.-F. Richter & U.-J. Rüetschi (Eds.), The cognitive approach to modeling environments (Workshop at Geographic Information Science, Münster; SFB/TR 8 Report No. 009-08/2006). Bremen, Germany: Universität Bremen. (pp. 23-28) [presentation slides with useful figures]
- Dara-Abrams, D. (2004). Our spatial knowledge of the built world. Poster presented at All-Science Poster Session, Carleton College, 8 Oct. 2004.
