Movement Choremes: Bridging Cognitive Understanding and Formal Characterizations of Movement Patterns¹

Abstract

This article discusses an approach to characterizing movement patterns (paths ⁄ trajectories) of individual agents that allows for relating aspects of cognitive conceptualization of movement patterns with formal spatial characterizations. To this end, we adopt a perspective of characterizing movement patterns on the basis of perceptual and conceptual invariants that we term movement choremes (MCs). MCs are formally grounded by behaviorally validating qualitative spatio-temporal calculi. Relating perceptual and cognitive aspects of space and formal theories of spatial information has shown promise to foster understanding of the semantics of movement patterns. Specifically, we discuss our approach in relation to existing qualitative formalisms such as the region connection calculus and the Egenhofer's intersection formalisms. We show that the MC approach is compatible with these approaches but offers additional opportunities to improve the cognitive adequacy of these formalisms. We summarize this paper using a movement taxonomy that also provides guidance for future research.

Modelling movement patterns using topological relations between a directed line and a region

“…At a different level, Klippel [2] characterized movement patterns from their perceptual and cognitive dimensions. Primitive movements are identified as "movement choremes".…”

“…In particular, the movement of a moving point with respect to a region can be modeled as a topological relation between a directed line and a region in order to reflect how this moving point evolves inside, outside or on the boundary of the region [1,2]. A qualitative representation of topological relations has for a long time been paid much attention in various disciplines such as geographic information science, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and cognitive science [3][4][5][6].…”

Evaluating the Cognitive Adequacy of the DLine-Region Calculus

“…We have developed an approach to characterize movement patterns based on the notion of conceptual primitives (Klippel 2011) that is built on the basic distinctions used to define topological relations between a line and a region: interior, exterior, and boundary (the latter distinguished as movement on a spot and extended movement on the boundary, see also Kurata & Egenhofer, 2009). This approach is comparable to work on movement patterns by Stewart Hornsby and Cole (2007) in that basic topological distinctions constitute primitive distinctions that could be additionally annotated by using, for example, direction information.…”