Mental maps

Mental maps are informal, personal maps that represent a place from an individual person's perspective. They should have the usual features of maps, such as a title, frame, labels (and perhaps a key), and colour or shading, but they don't need a scale. A north point could be useful, but is not essential.

Some features that are quite small in reality, such as the war memorial, gates to the school, or a gravestone at the local cemetery may be drawn quite big on the map because they are significant to the study. Other features that are quite large in reality, such as the school or the church beside the cemetery, may be shown quite small, or not even appear on the map, because they are only vaguely relevant to the study.

Students from the same area will have different mental maps of that area and what is in it, depending on how observant they are, how long they have lived there, how meaningful local features are to them, and so on.