Building Geographic Literacy Through Map Reading: The Role of Visual Attention, Strategy, and Task Performance
Keywords:
geographic literacy, map reading, visual attention, map-reading strategy, task performanceAbstract
The ability to read maps is an essential part of geographic literacy, involving the ability to attend to vision, place knowledge, map interpretation and the use of strategy to accomplish a task. This study explored the relationships between visual attention, map-reading strategy, task performance, and map-based geographic literacy, using repeated observations of 23 participants who undertook 12 structured map-reading tasks. Correctness of responses, overall accuracy, and time to complete the tasks were used to assess performance, and the number of fixations, length of scanpath, and attention to specific map regions were used to assess visual attention. Significant differences were found in accuracy for tasks and strategy types. The correct-response rates that were achieved using the strategies of semiology, approximate location, legend use and direct spatial knowledge were significantly higher than those obtained using whole-map scanning and unidentified strategies. The processing time, the number of fixations, and the length of scanpaths for unanswered tasks were longer, showing that increased visual effort did not necessarily result in increased accuracy. In general, these findings indicate that geographic literacy is more related to efficient and strategic visual processing rather than to the amount of visual search. It emphasises targeted map-reading instruction, spatial reasoning and interpreting the legend as a key to enhancing geographic literacy.
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