Invited Talks -- Virtual Reality as a Valuable Research Tool for Investigating Different Aspects of Spatial Cognition -- On the "Whats" and "Hows" of "Where": The Role of Salience in Spatial Descriptions -- Learning about Space -- Spatial Orientation -- Does Body Orientation Matter When Reasoning about Depicted or Described Scenes? -- Spatial Memory and Spatial Orientation -- Spatial Navigation -- Map-Based Spatial Navigation: A Cortical Column Model for Action Planning -- Efficient Wayfinding in Hierarchically Regionalized Spatial Environments -- Analyzing Interactions between Navigation Strategies Using a Computational Model of Action Selection -- A Minimalistic Model of Visually Guided Obstacle Avoidance and Path Selection Behavior -- Spatial Learning -- Route Learning Strategies in a Virtual Cluttered Environment -- Learning with Virtual Verbal Displays: Effects of Interface Fidelity on Cognitive Map Development -- Cognitive Surveying: A Framework for Mobile Data Collection, Analysis, and Visualization of Spatial Knowledge and Navigation Practices -- Maps and Modalities -- What Do Focus Maps Focus On? -- Locating Oneself on a Map in Relation to Person Qualities and Map Characteristics -- Conflicting Cues from Vision and Touch Can Impair Spatial Task Performance: Speculations on the Role of Spatial Ability in Reconciling Frames of Reference -- Spatial Communication -- Epistemic Actions in Science Education -- An Influence Model for Reference Object Selection in Spatially Locative Phrases -- Spatial Language -- Tiered Models of Spatial Language Interpretation -- Perspective Use and Perspective Shift in Spatial Dialogue -- Natural Language Meets Spatial Calculi -- Automatic Classification of Containment and Support Spatial Relations in English and Dutch -- Similarity and Abstraction.-Integral vs. Separable Attributes in Spatial Similarity Assessments -- Spatial Abstraction: Aspectualization, Coarsening, and Conceptual Classification -- Concepts and Reference Frames -- Representing Concepts in Time -- The Network of Reference Frames Theory: A Synthesis of Graphs and Cognitive Maps -- Spatially Constrained Grammars for Mobile Intention Recognition -- Modeling Cross-Cultural Performance on the Visual Oddity Task -- Spatial Modeling and Spatial Reasoning -- Modelling Scenes Using the Activity within Them -- Pareto-Optimality of Cognitively Preferred Polygonal Hulls for Dot Patterns -- Qualitative Reasoning about Convex Relations.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Cognition, Spatial Cognition 2008, held in Freiburg, Germany, in September 2008. The 27 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on spatial orientation, spatial navigation, spatial learning, maps and modalities, spatial communication, spatial language, similarity and abstraction, concepts and reference frames, as well as spatial modeling and spatial reasoning.