Three-Dimensional Representations of Contour Maps

Contour map learning may require three-dimensional representation of the area depicted by a contour map. The purpose of the study was to test the hypothesis that participants created three-dimensional mental representations of contour maps when asked to generate a cross-section profile of the map terrain from one point on the contour map to another. Gender differences in cross-section performance were also investigated, and it was hypothesized that males would perform better than females in a contour map cross-section test. Participants studied a series of contour maps or landsurface maps (three-dimensional drawings of an area), and answered two cross-section questions per map. Following the cross-section test, participants were given an incidental recognition test for the previously studied maps, either in a contour map format or a landsurface map format. Males recognized the landsurface maps corresponding to the contour map cross-section questions answered correctly better than contour map cross-section questions answered incorrectly, whereas females did not. This finding suggested that males, but not females, formed three-dimensional representations of the contour maps. There were no gender differences in performance on the contour map cross-section test, but males achieved higher recognition scores than females when the cross-section stimuli were contour maps. It was concluded that multiple spatial and verbal processing strategies can be used successfully to solve a contour map cross-section test, but that three-dimensional spatial processing may be more efficient than other forms of processing for long-term memory of contour maps. Copyright 1998 Academic Press.