Does spatial or visual information in maps facilitate text recall? Reconsidering the conjoint retention hypothesis

Learning With Concept and Knowledge Maps: A Meta-Analysis

“…Theories of how students learn from geographic maps may help us to understand the effects of concept maps. It is well established that introducing a geographic map as an adjunct to verbal information presented as text (or speech) increases recall of information referenced in both the map and the verbal presentations (Diana & Webb, 1997;Griffin & Robinson, 2005;Stock et al, 1995). Of particular interest, however, is whether geographic maps are more effective as supplementary materials than lists and other text formats and, if so, what specific characteristics and usages of the maps contribute to the enhancement.…”

The Picture Superiority Effect in Working Memory for Spatial and Temporal Order

“…In contrast, words tend to be assigned to their locations by means of a less efficient verbal strategy given the natural tendency of sequentially processing text stimuli (Baddeley, 1986): this effect has been supported by our data indicating that words -and not icons -tended to be relocated according to their original sequence, even when this was not explicitly required. The importance of visual processes in determining the pictorial superiority is supported by the observed advantage for learners when information is arranged in spatial maps as opposed to texts: although it was initially hypothesised that such advantage depended on depictive representations allowing simultaneous access to spatial and verbal details facilitating recall (Robinson, Robinson, & Katayama, 1999), more recent studies have uncovered the role played by the visual qualities of icons' features frequently used in maps to enhance memory (Griffin & Robinson, 2005). Moreover, the finding that transpositions between serial neighbouring items -a phenomenon commonly observed in verbal serial order tasks (Burgess & Hitch, 1999) -occurred primarily with words (at least in the combined condition), supports the use of verbal processes in maintaining locations of words.…”

Understanding Reader Takeaways in Thematic Maps Under Varying Text, Detail, and Spatial Autocorrelation

“…While past work [19] has focused on exploring the effects of text and map design factors on a reader's comprehension, our work differs in that we considered the interdependence of these factors on novel measures of design effectiveness via the takeaways provided. First, the participants were asked to formulate a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 5 takeaways, where each takeaway is a set of sentences describing the most important information gleaned from the annotated map.…”