Constructing a mental representation from an abstract technical diagram

Abstract

The construction of a mental representation from a weather map diagram by professional meteorologists and nonmeteorologists was investigated using a series of drawing tasks. Subjects first produced a drawn copy of a weather map diagram onto a blank map of Australia. Conditions during the copying process were controlled to ensure the temporal separation of each subject's viewing and drawing behavior. Following the copying task, subjects completed a control drawing task, after which they produced drawn recall of the weather map they had previously copied. Analysis of the drawings produced and videotaped records of the drawing process indicated that the superior recall of the meteorologists was associated with a qualitatively different approach to the weather map tasks. The meteorologists appeared to have processed the material in terms of high level abstract relations and meteorological generalizations. In contrast, the nonmeteorologists' processing appeared to be derived largely from low level visuo-spatial characteristics of the display. The results were interpreted as evidence of different bases for the construction of a mental representation from the weather map information by the two subject groups.