Investigating visual cognition is essential for understanding how individuals consciously view and respond to urban environments, facilitating the desired outcomes in urban design. This literature review explores various methods for studying spatial-visual cognition to uncover how individuals navigate, perceive, and engage with their surroundings. A systematic search was conducted across three databases-Egyptian Knowledge Bank, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate-to identify 31 relevant papers that met the inclusion criteria from an initial set of 1,000 articles. Drawing from these scholarly sources, the review analyzes different approaches to studying visual cognition, focusing on methods such as free recall, cued recall, and estimation tasks, each offering unique insights into cognitive processing. Additionally, the review examines mobile eye-tracking, a more recent and advanced method that provides real-time data on visual attention during navigation. By comparing these methods, the review emphasizes the value of employing multiple techniques simultaneously to gain a comprehensive understanding of spatial-visual cognition, which is vital for effective urban design and planning.