• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.19-29
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• 2012

It is very necessary to know about child recognition of residential environment to plan and design an environment proper for children's growth and development. The research method using Cognitive Map, which may be defined as "an overall mental image of representation of the space and layout of a setting" can be a good tool for studying child recognition of residential environment. This study analyzed the child recognition of the size of home range, the number of residential environment elements, the types of Cognitive Map and the levels of Cognitive Map to understand the contents of child recognition about their residential environment. Subjects were 206 children in age6, 8 and 10 in Gwanju and Jeonnam area. As the result of the study, we found that 70% of child recognized 100~500 M as the size of home range, and that the number of the elements of residential environment was 7, average. And we also found that sequential map was more popular than spatial map in child's Cognitive Map type and that almost 60% of child respondents drew the Cognitive Map of level 1 complexity type. As the result of this study, we could know that the research method using Cognitive Map was very useful for understanding the child recognition of residential environment.