Position Location on Topographical Maps: Effects of Task Factors, Training, and Strategies

There is little research on the ways people go about the very common task of extracting information from various forms of maps. In this study, we examined task factors, cognitive processes, and individual differences as determinants of performance differences when locating a position on a topographical map from a given position on the ground. Subjects for the study were 188 Australian Army personnel. Both spatial visualization ability and a visual learning style preference were found to be effective predictors of performance, whereas a form of verbal strategy training produced significantly improved performance. When no effective strategy was supplied, those subjects with a strong visual learning style preference performed dramatically better than their low-preference counterparts, suggesting that this form of processing preference may have a powerful impact on untrained performance. These results indicate that most subjects usually approach the task of map reading in a relatively passive way, without any coherent strategy, and then attempt to encode information using inefficient spatial codes. When a simple and effective verbal strategy was supplied, most subjects were able to adopt it, with uniformly beneficial, results. This suggests that performance on many spatial tasks could be improved by verbal strategy training.