Conclusion

We used digital sketch maps to understand the cognitive abilities and limitations of map users during a memory task via drawing. On one hand, we tried to assess the quality of sketch maps based on the drawn elements, which, we think, will reflect the performances of different user groups and may reveal significant insights about their cognitive processes and strategies of retrieving a spatial information. On the other hand, we integrated ET statistics to quantify the cognitive processes to be able to put forward time-related, gaze activity-related (especially fixations) analyses. We also derived the order with which the sketched objects were drawn from ET data. The order of drawing offers a significant insight of hierarchical construction of cognitive map and may unveil the differences in the retrieval strategies of experts and novices, if there are any.
The task required of recalling the main structuring elements belonging to a screen map. This retrieval act involved WM-LTM transitions, such as retrieving spatial information stored in WM through LTM or strategies for constructing hierarchy in between map elements.
We regarded visual variables such as location, shape, size and colour as they were equally important on the drawing order. There were several reasons behind it. Although Bertin (1983) pointed out that colour is useful for forming the instant images required for effective cartographic communication, our findings did not fully support the Bertin’s assumption. The order of drawing differed for experts and novices, so that experts drew map elements in red (roads) in the first place, whereas novices drew the ones in blue (hydrography). However, the common characteristic of the first drawn elements was that they both contained linear objects. This finding shows that the shape of the map elements is at least as important as colour. In fact, some studies revealed that colour usually has little effect on recalling map information (\citealp*{PATTON_1985}; \citealp{Potash_1978}; \citealp*{Shurtleff_1986}; \citealp*{Thorndyke_1980}). Additionally, hydrography category included lakes, which were areal representations. Drawing areal elements instead of linear ones (or in our case, polygons (lakes) and lines (rivers) were a part of a whole (hydrography)) in the first place is a sign that the size also mattered when recalling map information.
Based on assessment of sketch maps considering aggregated analysis of presence & location, shape, size, and colour of drawn elements, we found out that neither expertise, nor gender differences was influential on retrieval of spatial information. The findings that indicate males and females do not differ on map performance correspond to what was found by \citealp*{Beatty_1987}; \citealp{Loveland_1995}; \citealp*{Lloyd_1984}; \citealp*{PATTON_1985}. The same applies for the fact that the influence of expertise was not significant ( \citealp*{Thorndyke_1980}; Gilhooly et al., 1988 ). The fact that novices and experts do not differ much in terms of how they learn and remember map-related information can be explained with the general map knowledge that steps in when both user groups saw a typical planimetric map stimulus. Hence, various levels of map experience may result in modest differences (Kulhavy and Stock, 1996). Besides the maplikeness and the simplicity of the map, the task to be executed is influential on performance. It is important to keep in mind that if the task required domain-specific knowledge about geography or related areas, experienced users would perform superior compared to novices (Kulhavy and Stock, 1996; \citealp*{Thorndyke_1980}). Although the individual factors, other than expertise and gender, might likely to have an effect on results, the sample size was not sufficient to draw conclusions regarding to ethnicity or native language.
Furthermore, eye tracking statistics (trial duration, average fixation duration and the number of fixations per second) also revealed that there is no significant difference among expert and novice groups, as well as female and male groups.
This research can be extended to explore additional insights offered by brain imaging techniques such as electroencephalogram (EEG). The reason is that the cognitive processes emerge from both overt and covert attention. As we can easily detect overt attention with ET method, covert attention can be observed by EEG as a subsidiary resource to understand the complete cognitive process with the recall task of spatial memory.