Organizers: K. Grossner, D. Montello and D. Janelle (University of California, Santa Barbara)

This workshop will discuss the ontology of spatial thinking and reasoning, that is, what concepts do people with different backgrounds, disciplines, training, etc., use to think and reason about spatial aspects of problems. This topic has been discussed by at least three research communities during the past two decades: those conducting basic research in behavioral and cognitive science, those developing and evaluating software and information systems, and those designing and evaluating education programs in physical science, geography, or other fields. Our hope is to bring representatives from these three communities together in an effort to make progress on both domain-specific and shared goals. Among the questions we plan to address: Are there spatial concepts, principles, and reasoning tasks that are general across all fields, and if so, what are useful or appropriate ways to organize them? More broadly, is a unified ontology of spatial thinking and reasoning a feasible and worthwhile goal, and if so, for what purposes?

For details, please see the workshop web page: http://sand.spatial.ucsb.edu/cosit