Reginald G. Golledge - US grants

This award will enable Dr. Reginald G. Golledge of the University of California, Santa Barbara to conduct research in Australia for six weeks. Dr. Golledge will collaborate with Professor Donald Parkes of the Institute of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Newcastle on the development and production of "talking maps", for use by people with impaired vision, and to establish a program of experimental research on the problem of navigating without sight. The Australian group has considerable expertise in the area of "talking maps", and is pursuing related projects in the fields of navigation without sight. This award will facilitate the completion of some aspects of collaborative research aimed at finding replacements for maps based on the sense of touch, and on development of methods to actually produce a "talking map."

This Accomplishment-Based Renewal award will enable Professor Golledge and his collaborators to continue their research on how children and adults acquire, process, and store information about new geographical environments. The purpose of this research is to determine how people acquire the knowledge they need to navigate in cities and other areas. Geographical knowledge acquisition and use for navigation is analyzed in both field and laboratory settings. The previous work on this topic conducted by Professor Golledge and his research team is highly regarded. It has increased our understanding of how people identify landmarks, learn routes, and integrate such knowledge into mental images of neighborhoods and cities. This award will permit the investigators to elaborate those understandings. Research findings resulting from this project have important implications for theories and models of how children and adults learn about spatial relationships generally and how they come to mentally visualize local and larger areas.

Many geographers, psychologists, and other cognitive scientists have conducted research on the ways that people acquire knowledge about spatial patterns and relationships. Researchers disagree about the process by which people gain knowledge of more complex spatial principles like distance, connectivity, regional structure, and spatial stratification. Some contend that this type of knowledge is acquired through aggregation of insights gained through single experiences. Others argue that such knowledge is more quickly and completely obtained through direct exposure to media like maps that directly present spatial information in configurational formats. This project will test the validity of these two contentions through a set of comparative experiments. Subjects will be separated into two groups. People in one group will be shown series of slides that represent ground-level views along routes that those individuals might travel. People in the other group will be shown maps covering the same routes. Members of both groups will be asked to conduct a series of tasks that test their abilities to recognize spatial patterns and distributions, to reconstruct routes, to recognize the proximity of locations, and to identify regional and hierarchical relationships. The accuracy and speed of answers will be measured and tested to determine whether those who acquire information through the "bottoms up" approach replicated by viewing the slides retain gain as much configurational knowledge as those who have the "birdseye" perspectives from viewing maps. This project will directly test hypotheses about the efficacy of different means of obtaining spatial information. The results of these experiments will significantly enhance our knowledge of how people form spatial understandings, of why they behave as they do in different spatial contexts, and how geographic education might be altered to become more effective.

Contemporary geographical information systems (GIS) embody a number of functions that are directly analogous to tasks humans normally perform in cognizing and evaluating space. Since GIS have become important tools for storing and analyzing spatially referenced information and have many practical applications in economic, social, and environmental planning, it is important that the configuration of knowledge in GIS accurately reflects the ways in which humans cognize space and internally represent environments. This research project poses the question of whether a cognitive representation of space is an internalized geographic information system. It will determine the degree to which selected processes involved in compiling and using GIS are similar to those involved in compiling and using cognitive maps. Emphasis will be placed on the type of reasoning and the inference required in both cognitive mapping and GIS and on how such processes can be understood and interpreted by people. Experiments will be designed to evaluate human competence in performing such activities as recognizing adjacency, connectivity, network membership, path selection criteria, conducting analysis and compilation of overlay and compression procedures, and undertaking neighborhood delineation and regionalization activities. It is not well understood how humans perform these activities nor what types of errors arise when performing them. Interdisciplinary research on spatial behavior by psychologists, cognitive scientists, roboticists, artificial intelligence engineers and transport modelers is increasing rapidly. Behavioral research into the design and use of geographic information systems and on such topics as visualization of spatial information, development of user interfaces and user friendly representation modes can help software and data base developers improve communication, analysis, and understanding with GIS. This project will identify theoretical and practical links between the processes of spatial cognition used generally in spatial knowledge acquisition and the spatial processing and analysis components which form the basis of many geographical information systems.

9318643 GOLLEDGE It is well known that there are significant differences in performance levels for spatial tasks between men and women. Many scientists have argued that this difference in performance is an important factor deterring women from participating more fully in many of the sciences and engineering. However, it is unclear whether this difference in performance is the result of innate sex-related differences in spatial "competence" (i.e. physiological differences) or in gender-related influences, such as experience, training, attitude, and culture. The goal of this project is to seek a better understanding of the relative importance of gender-related and sex-related differences in spatial competence. This project is being undertaken by an interdisciplinary team that provides the breadth necessary to undertake this ambitious research. A carefully chosen sample of 80 persons will be thoroughly studied using a complementary variety of approaches including personal histories, attitude surveys, behavior surveys, psychological tests, and laboratory and field tests of spatial competence and behavior. This combination of research on social/anthropological and human geographic factors, along with standard psychometric test measurements and performance measures on specific tasks, will provide an indication of the roles that socially rooted values, expectations, and pressures play in determining the existence (or lack) of sex-related explanations of variations in spatial abilities and performance. Results of the analysis will contribute significantly to better understanding the factors behind sex and gender differences in spatial ability and to enhancement of theories related to spatial knowledge in general. As such, the findings will have major implications for a broad range of theoretical and practical issues related to gender and sex differences in spatial performance.

U. of California, Santa Barbara This project examines the extent to which blind and vision impaired people can develop and use in everyday tasks, spatial information at the `geographic` scale. The methodology will utilize matched groups of congenitally blind individuals (blind from birth), partially sighted and sighted participants. Matching will be by age, sex, culture and socio-economic factors. Tasks to be used in the research include location, distance estimation, model building, direction finding and route following. Information will be obtained from the participants and subsequently compared by using verbal instructions and videotaping of question and answer sessions. The analysis will also make use of debriefing sessions, preliminary consultative and background interviews. The resulting data will be analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The research will have a cross cultural component where information on cognitive mapping and human navigation will be compared between the U.S. and the U.K. These studies will be closely matched to allow direct comparison. This aspect of the research is important because of the debate as to whether the concept of disability is functionally driven. Blind and vision impaired persons in the U.S. have been faced with a `normalization, independent and self-help` ethic whereas in the U.K. there is a `social welfare` ethic of assistance. Dr Mark Blades at University of Sheffield and Dr Robert Kitchin at University of Swansea will participate in this aspect of the work. Scale effects and cross-cultural comparisons have been largely ignored in work on spatial cognition of blind and vision impaired. The research addresses basic problems relating to theories of spatial cognition by this disabled group, as well as, practical problems of the ways in which spatial abilities and actions by blind and vision impaired people can be enhanced in a manner that influences their quality of life. The results will contribute to the body of information revealing how the visually impaired and blind think about and behave in an everyday geographic environment. This enhanced understanding has important policy implications concerning planning and education. In addition the work will likely provide information on ways this group's wayfinding and orientation skills may be enhanced.

This workshop focuses on the topic of 'Geography in the 21st Century' with the overall objective of bringing together a collection of visionary thinkers from the field to discuss a broad array of topics around the following questions: What topical areas in geographic research will emerge as the most important in the near and mid-distant future? Will research in the 21st Century be dominated by single researchers or groups of researchers from one discipline or will multi-investigator, cross-disciplinary efforts better serve the dominant topical areas? How do we effectively, efficiently, and quickly transfer and integrate cutting-edge research into the educational arena? What are promising technological areas that will facilitate geographic research and teaching? How do we train teachers to train other teachers to use the resources and technologies that are becoming available in a computer-based information society? Ultimately, the vision is to design and develop a National Geography Learning Network that will facilitate the implementation of answers to each of the above questions?

For the workshop, selected individuals will be asked to prepare a brief introductory statement to help guide general discussion on each topic. General discussion will be taped and the original contributors, along with two other volunteers, will enlarge the original paper to include the essence of workshop discussion. These individual reports will be edited and combined by the workshop coordinator to produce a White Paper for distribution to NSF and to be made available to members of the Association of American Geographers, the National Council for Geographic Education, and to other academic or non-academic bodies or individuals who express an interest in the topic. The White Paper will be taken as a central planning document for attempts by the Association of American Geographers to develop a web-based National Geography Learning Network.

Considerable attention has focused recently on the development of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to more effectively manage transportation networks. In particular, Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) are being developed to alert drivers and public transportation passengers to delays in real-time so they can make travel decisions to avoid congestion and take advantage of under-utilized facilities. Urban area governments need to assess which types of ATIS are most cost-effective, and whether other projects might be better investments of public funds. This collaborative research project will develop transportation models to support these types of analysis by integrating geographic theories and transportation network models and explicitly considering the heterogeneity of spatial knowledge among the traveling public. The research plan includes field experiments to establish tests of spatial relationships. Residents of a number of metropolitan areas will participate in surveys that address transportation behavior, assessment of spatial knowledge, and perceptions of transportation alternatives. Latent variable and discrete-choice models will be estimated to establish the effect that knowledge of the transportation network and information-processing capabilities have on short- and long-range transportation and urban behaviors. The analysis will compare the predictive capabilities of these models against conventional models. The expected outcome of this research project is an enhanced capability to model travelers' responses to emerging information strategies to manage transportation demands. This project represents an important advance in basic scientific knowledge, as it more closely ties geographic theories to transportation planning models. Many geographic experiments have established means to measure a person's spatial knowledge by observing their wayfinding efficiency and transportation behavior, but these methods have not been used to predict future travel choices. Transportation planning models have ignored the heterogeneity of spatial ability and knowledge and instead assumed that travelers have full information about the network or homogenous perception errors. More innovative research studies have examined how spatial knowledge may influence travelers' response to ATIS messages but have not addressed the more basic question of how travelers become aware of alternative routes, modes, destinations, etc. This project will address that question by relating spatial knowledge to transportation choice from the full range of options. Project findings will contribute to the refinement of existing transportation planning models, thereby allowing government planners to examine transportation investments and more effectively allocate public expenditures.

Proposal # HRD-00-99261
Institution: UC Santa Barbara
Principal Investigator: Reginald Golledge
Title: "Transcending the Digital Divide"

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to develop, evaluate, and disseminate a non-visual interface for accessing digital information. The aim is to investigate the perceptual and cognitive problems that blind people face when trying to interpret information provided in a multimodal manner. The project also plans to provide touch sensitive and sound based network interface and navigation devices that incorporate cognitive wayfinding heuristics. Haptic (force feedback) interfaces will be provided for exploring web pages that consist of map, graphic, iconic or image products. Sound identifiers for on-screen windowed, map, and image information will also be provided. These tasks will contribute to transcending the Digital Divide that increasingly separates blind or vision impaired people from the growing information-based workplace.

Recent research at UCSB has begun to explore how individuals identify features presented through sound and touch. Other research (e.g. O'Modhrrain and Gillespie, 1998; McKinley and Scott, 1998) have used haptics to explore screen objects such as windows, pulldown menus, buttons, and sliders; but map, graphic and other cartographic representations have not been explored. In particular, the potential of auditory maps of on-screen phenomena (e.g. as would be important in GIS applications) has barely been examined and few examples exist of combining audio and touch principles to build an interface. While imaginative efforts to build non-visual interfaces have been proceeding. there is a yet little empirical evidence that people without sight can use them effectively (i.e. develop a true representation of the experienced phenomena).

Experiments will be undertaken to test the ability of vision impaired and sighted people from different age groups to use these new interface or features such as: (i) the haptic mouse or a touch window tied to auditory communication displays; (ii) digitized real sounds to indicate environmental features at their mapped locations; (iii) "sound painting" of maps, images, or charts to indicate gradients of phenomena like temperature, precipitation, pressure, population density and altitude. Tests will be developed to evaluate (i) the minimum resolvable area for the haptic interpretation of scenes; (ii) the development of skills for shape tracing in the sound or the force-feedback haptic domain, (iii) the possibility of using continuous or discreet sound symbols associated with touch sensitive pads to learn hierarchically nested screen information (e.g. locations of cities within regions within states within nations); (iv) to evaluate how dynamic activities such as scrolling, zooming, and searching can be conducted in the haptic or auditory domain, (v) to evaluate people's comprehension and ability to explore, comprehend, and make inferences about various non-visual interpretations of complex visual displays (e.g. maps and diagrams), and (vi) to explore the effectiveness of using a haptic mouse with a 2" square motion domain to search a 14" screen (i.e. scale effects).

Spatial thinking and reasoning is common to most knowledge domains. It is central to geography and other geosciences, and it is important in domains ranging from astronomy to zoology where geospatial databases are common. Other knowledge areas, such as dance, music, painting, sculpture, genetics, biology, physics, and linguistics, all require spatial thinking and use spatial metaphors. The peculiar contribution of spatial thinking and reasoning to solve certain types of problems has been recognized by psychologists like Beck and Uttal, who claimed that preparing and using spatial representations of information (as in maps, graphs, and images) provides a perspective that is not matched by any other means. The purpose of this research project is to develop a spatial task ontology and a concept lexicon to assist in the development of spatial thinking and reasoning. The investigator will define spatial thinking and identify sets of tasks that will help people understand the nature and importance of spatial thinking and reasoning in everyday life. The task ontology will identify different levels and types of tasks ranging from those designed to identify spatial primitives and will illustrate how such primitives can be expanded into discrete levels. The levels range from simple derivations to more complex multiple combinations of primitives and derivations to form complex concepts, such as geographic association and spatial interpolation. When elaborated, these concepts assist in the understanding of everyday activities, such as learning a route to primary school, choosing a neighborhood in which to live, or selecting places to work, shop, or enjoy recreational activities. This project aims to synthesize theoretical work on spatial ontology with empirical work on spatial task performance in the world of everyday experience. To achieve the project's objectives, sets of innovative tasks will be developed and tested in both laboratory and field settings to evaluate whether or not developing an understanding of spatial concepts embedded in everyday living leads to enriched geographic understanding of neighborhood, city, region, nation, and the world.

This project will explore the ways that people organize the ways they think about space and the forms of thinking and reasoning that they use when they are confronted with spatial information. The research should shed light on how enhanced understanding of geographic concepts influences the comprehensive of spatial information, and it will illustrate differences that result from formal training in geographic concepts. All of these developments have intellectual implications ranging from the formalization of geographic knowledge to the development of more effective geographic information systems. This project will influence the development of future enhancements of geographic information systems, and it could help identify new strategies for more effective geographic education at all levels.