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Hierarchy in Cognitive Maps and the Simplicity Principle

The aim of this paper is to relate the research on cognitive maps, mental representations of the external world, which are thought to be organized hierarchically, with the simplicity principle, a formal version of Occam’s Razor inductive bias, which states that short hypotheses are to be preferred over longer ones. First, I will describe some important properties of hierarchical structures and define what is meant by simplicity. Next, I will review some results supporting the view that cognitive maps are structured hierarchically, not following Euclidean metrics, and that some cognitive functions seem to prefer simpler representations over complex ones. This hints at the possibility that the hierarchical organization of cognitive maps may also follow the simplicity principle. Finally, I will suggest an experiment in which such hypothesis could be tested and discuss the implications and limitations of integrating both approaches.