The experiences of learning a city by direct experience or navigating through it and studying a map of it provide people with different types of spatial information. Navigation is thought t o provide procedural knowledge, which is stored as verbal coding, and map reading is thought to provide survey knowledge, which is stored as imagery coding. Subjects who learned a city primarily through years of navigation and subjects who learned a city by studying a cartographic map for several minutes were asked to perform the simple experimental task of locating familiar landmarks relative to reference points. Distortions in the cognitive maps of subjects were analyzed to determine significant differences in patterns of distance and direction errors. Patterns of absolute distortion are explained by theories related to the use of alignment and rotation heuristics for encoding information and an implicit scaling process for decoding information. Subjects who learned the city from studying a cartographic map were significantly more accurate and faster at performing the experimental task than subjects who learned the city through direct experience o r navigation. Both groups were significantly more accurate when making their judgments with centrally located reference points than with peripherally located reference points. These results provide knowledge of processes used in cognitive mapping and the distortions caused by these processes. Ultimately such studies lead to an understanding of spatial decision-making and behavior.
Multimedia presentations that combine verbal and visual information are increasingly becoming important methods for communicating geographic information. This article discusses literature related to cognitive load theory (CLT) and offers ideas on how this theory might be used for geography education and research. By considering the limitations of the human mind, CLT offers geographers a way to assess critical components of the spatial learning processes. Methods for measuring cognitive load and reducing overloads are discussed within a map context. It is argued that managing the cognitive load experienced by learners is the key to representing geographic information.
This article investigates how people process information from aerial photographs to categorize locations. Three cognitive experiments were conducted with human subjects viewing a series of aerial photographs and categorizing the land use for target locations. Reaction time, accuracy, and confidence were considered as dependent variables related to the success of the categorization process. The first experiment considered two categories of land use, the relative size of the visual field, and two rounds of unsupervised learning. Subjects were more successful categorizing higher-order land-use classes than they were lower-order categories. Subjects were significantly more accurate and confident with larger photographs, but not significantly faster. Significant improvements between the rounds indicated unsupervised learning was taking place. The second experiment confirmed the hypothesis that geographers would have more success than nongeographers during a single categorization round. The types of land use considered were significantly related to success. Subjects were again more accurate and confident, but not faster with larger visual fields. A third experiment considered seven rounds of supervised learning, the sex of the subjects, and the amount of experience with photographs. Reaction time and confidence improved with supervised learning, but accuracy did not. Subjects had significantly more success with photographs they viewed more than one time. Male subjects were significantly faster, more accurate, and more confident than female subjects at doing the categorization task. By the seventh learning round the male advantage in reaction time and accuracy was no longer significant, but the male advantage in confidence continued through seven learning rounds.
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