Cognition des logiques et modes d’organisation de l’espace en milieu rural : l’apport de la carte mentale en tant que médium d’expression cas d’étude « Mechtas et Douars » de Guidjel dans les hauts plateaux Sétifiens

Abstract

This research approaches and explores the subject of the spatial cognition through the reading of the socio spatial representations of the users and inhabitants of the scattered environments peripheral to the urban agglomeration of Setif in the high plateaus of Algeria. Our interest is in graphic representations drawn in the form of mental maps of the location of the environment and rural living environments and the impact of the latter on the spatial behavior of its users. It is part of a multidisciplinary approach and outlines an analytical approach for deciphering graphic representations by developing a grid for reading individual mental maps. The latter are considered to be an effective tool for collecting data likely to provide a platform for gathering multi-sensory information on the existence, evolution and future of suburban rural environments. The information gathered from the perceptions and feelings of the inhabitant and user will make it possible to assess the impact and effect of the built environment on the behavior of the individual and the social group and vice versa. This research uses the term "cognitive mapping" as a descriptive title for the field of study concerned with understanding the spatial thinking of living environments with contrasting densities, and 'spatial cognition' to designate a person's spatial knowledge of that environment, whatever its configuration. The aim is to demonstrate the importance of retrospection in past and present research and its contribution to the field of behavioral science research, specifically in relation to cognitive mapping applied to urban studies and architecture. The specificity of this research consists in widening the fields of investigation of research in spatial cognition to territorial scales of intervention, i.e., beyond the city and precisely through the peripheral rural territory of the city of Setif in Algeria. The aim was to test the effectiveness and flexibility of the mind map tool. This experiment enabled us to examine this type of subjective representation of space, and to propose methodological interpretations of it as real and novel experiments.