Résumé
This paper examines the relationships between virtual space and the pre-experience of geographic space, interrogating how navigation and spatial interaction in digital environments shape the cognitive and perceptual representations that individuals form of real physical spaces before actually visiting them. Drawing on an interdisciplinary approach combining information and communication sciences, cognitive psychology and perceptual neuroscience, it analyses the ways in which virtual environments function as anticipatory spaces that preconfigure the experience of geographic space, generating mental representations, spatial expectations and orientational schemas that users subsequently mobilise in real-world navigation contexts. The paper contributes to reflection on the relationships between virtual and physical spatialities in the global information society, arguing that the pre-experience of geographic space through digital environments constitutes a new form of spatial mediation that transforms the cognitive and sensorimotor relationships of individuals to territory, raising both theoretical questions about the nature of spatial experience and practical questions about the design of virtual environments intended to serve as preparatory tools for real-world spatial navigation.