The Cognitive Limits of Animated Maps

When it comes to designing animated maps, the bottleneck is no longer the hardware, the software, or the data – it is the limited visual and cognitive processing capabilities of the map reader. Only sporadic progress has been made within GIScience in answering even the most basic questions: Under what conditions and for what kinds of map-reading tasks are animated maps effective, and how can their effectiveness be increased? Fortunately, over the past 20 years cognitive researchers in psychology and education have created a comprehensive set of theories that explain how people look at and learn from dynamic images, under what conditions these images work or fail, and why. Moreover, numerous controlled experiments, often designed to replicate and build upon previous studies, have validated these theories (something that is rare in cartography). This article presents a synthesis of this research and shows how it (1) directly informs mapping practices, (2) explains important cognitive differences between static and animated maps, (3) provides much-needed empirical support for emerging cartographic practices (where testing has yet to be done), and (4) generally confirms results from previous map studies. The article outlines solutions to split attention, retroactive inhibition, and cognitive overload. It also champions a perceptual–cognitive approach to cartography that would allow us to can explain why our designs work and not merely whether they work. Given the sizeable investment and number of animated maps in use today, such insights seem highly relevant.