Role of Mimeticism and Spatiality in Textual Recall

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

“…Griffin and Robinson then measured student recall of both information represented in the text only and information represented in both the text and adjunct display. Griffin and Robinson's (2000) findings did not support the CRH. There was no difference in recall for maps versus lists and no evidence that maps were encoded in a more spatial manner than were lists.…”

“…This claim was recently challenged by Griffin and Robinson (2000), who found no advantage for maps over feature lists in facilitating text recall. In two experiments, we crossed maps and lists with icons and names (c.f., Griffin & Robinson), and employed materials and methodology very similar to those used in previous CRH studies by Kulhavy and colleagues (Kulhavy, Stock, Verdi, Rittschof, and Savenye, 1993;Stock, Kulhavy, Peterson, Hancock, & Verdi, 1995).…”

“…Spatiality is operationalized as the relative position of the icons to each other, the map borders, and map features such as rivers and bays, whereas visuality is defined as information derived by viewing a pictorial image. Griffin and Robinson (2000) designed a study that attempted to separate this possible confounding to determine if the recall advantage of geographic maps was due to spatial (intactness) or visual (mimetic feature icons) qualities. If the facilitative advantage offered by maps is because of the spatial layout of the map itself, then students who view maps displaying mimetic icons should recall more text information than do students who view a simple list of the same mimetic icons.…”

“…To test the CRH claim that maps are encoded as spatial intact images, we employed the same spatial concurrent task used by Griffin and Robinson (2000), which was similar to one used by Kruley, Sciama, and Glenberg (1994). The CRH has traditionally been viewed through a dualcoding lens, but perhaps Baddeley's (1992) model of working memory is more compatible with CRH.…”

When tactics collide: Counter effects between an adjunct map and prequestions

“…A number of researchers (Abel & Kulhavy, 1986, 1989Griffin & Robinson, 2000;Kulhavy, Schwartz, & Shaha, 1983;Mastropieri & Peters, 1987;Schwartz & Kulhavy, 1981) have discounted this idea by showing that subjects viewing maps with features listed along the border (whether depicted by labels or mimetic icons) recall significantly less from accompanying texts than those viewing maps with features that are spatially dispersed. If maps do, in fact, aid text recall through selective cueing, there should have been no difference between groups since both displays contained identical linguistic and graphic elements.…”