Hello Eszter,

This study might be relevant:

Skiles M (2013) From Signs to Minds: Wayfinding Design and Mental Maps. Presented at the 2013 SEGD Academic Summit

https://segd.org/signs-minds-wayfinding-design-and-mental-maps-0 

Also, this paper:

Gurjanovaite K & Beconyte  (2005) Cartographic analysis of general geographic elements in children’s mental maps

http://studylib.net/doc/7617327/cartographic-analysis-of-general-geographic-elements-in-c...

If this link does not work, try:

http://icaci.org/files/documents/ICC_proceedings/ICC2007/documents/doc/THEME%2022/Oral%202/CARTOGRAPHIC%20ANALYSIS%20OF%20GENERAL%20GEOGRAPHIC%20ELEMENTS%20IN%20CHIL.doc

Murphy A & Murtagh B (2010) Children policy and the built environment

https://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/TheInstituteofSpatialandEnvironmentalPlanning/Impact/WorkingPapers/FileStore/Filetoupload,432505,en.pdf

There may be something interesting in this chapter:

Ungar, S. (2000). Cognitive mapping without visual experience. In

Kitchin, R. & Freundschuh, S. (eds) Cognitive Mapping: Past Present and Future.London: Routledge.

http://homepages.phonecoop.coop/vamos/work/research/papers/cmppf.html

Very best wishes,

Mary

Dear Eszter:

If I understand it well, your are planning to perform:

(1) a research on environmental education;

(2) to see if children's environmental education affects their ability to draw (mental) maps and their perception of space and favorite areas; 

(3) to know if there are previous studies on children's perception of space, namely their capacity to draw maps.

(4) to withdraw some conclusions from these drawings.

Your idea of perform a research on environmental education is noteworthy. I use to say that environmental education should be even mandatory in schools. Traditionally, most of us have heard from an ethic of justice (i.e., we should not treat others unfairly; See L, Kohlberg's work) and from an ethic of care and responsibility (i.e. not to turn away from others in need; See C. Gilligan's oeuvre), but not from an ethic of conservation, that is, an ethic whose main injunction is that we should respect and protect nature, not only because it is useful for us --  anthropocentric reasoning -- but mainly because nature, refer it to water, air, or earth, deserves to be respected in itself -- biocentric reasoning  See P. Kahn's thinking on this respect.

As for (2), it seems natural to think that children's environmental education  affects their perception and representation of space and their ability to draw maps of several kinds (e,g., from a valley, a city, a road and so on). Let me say that to speak of mental maps does not make much sense to me. As I see it, it makes sense to speak of a road map, a city map, and so forth. So,  when we speak of mental maps, we are speaking metaphorically, because there are not in our minds mental maps in the sense that there are roads maps, cities maps and so forth in our office or car.

I know of several authors who have studied children's conception of space and their ability to draw maps of several kinds. (see, for this respect, Mary's cogent answer). Piaget, for example, found that children's conception or respresention of space evolve from a topological to a topographic to a Euclidean space. Based on Piaget' work, the USA psychologist Lynn Liben, for example, has researched  extensively children's ability to draw maps and other cartographic concepts. However, both Piaget's and Liben's work has nothing to do with your excellent idea of analyzing children's perception and conception of space and their ability to form certain mental maps as a function of their environmental education. In this sense, your research seems to open a new line of research,

As for (3), look at my previous  considerations.

As for (4) I am eager to know the main conclusions of your research.

I hope that this helps.

Best regards

Thank you very much, Mary and Orlando!

Orlando, probably I didn't explain my ideas well... The idea is not to analyze childern's ability to draw maps but to analyze their maps and understand which spaces are important for them, by which spaces are they attracted in general, in order to understand which are the ideal areas to use for environmental education. This might not be the best question to ask, but to begin with, I started with this one... For this reason I was looking for studies in this topic, to see how others have dealed with this topic.