For example, the road bends in order to go around a hill or stops at the top of a mountain. On a contour map:. How would you calculate the contour interval on the map of Stowe, Vermont see Figure above?
This map does not represent the landscape. The green line indicates the main road, black dotted lines are trails, and there are markers for campsites, a picnic area, and a shuttle bus stop. With contour lines to indicate elevation, the topographic map in Figure below shows the terrain. How does the map of Bryce Canyon reveal the terrain of the region? Several principles are important for reading a topographic map:. Contour lines show the 3-dimensional shape of the land Figure below.
What does the spacing of contour lines indicate? Just to the right of the city of Stowe is a steep hill with a sharp rise of about ft that becomes less steep toward the right. Concentric circles indicate a hill. When contour lines form closed loops all together in the same area, this is a hill. The smallest loops are the higher elevations and the larger loops are downhill.
On the Stowe map, which hill has an elevation of feet? If you found Cady Hill, on the left side of the map, you are right. Hatched concentric circles indicate a depression, as seen in the Figure below. The hatch marks are short, perpendicular lines inside the circle.
The innermost hatched circle would represent the deepest part of the depression, while the outer hatched circles represent higher elevations. V-shaped expanses of contour lines indicate stream valleys.
Where a stream crosses the land, the Vs in the contour lines point uphill. The channel of the stream passes through the point of the V and the open end of the V represents the downstream portion. Download image jpg, 63 KB. The better maps communicate information, the more effective they are as a real-world model. Topographic maps show elevation of landforms above sea level. Bathymetric maps show depths of landforms below sea level. Participants in the Elevation Language group were told that each contour line represents one value of elevation, and to consider that the concept of elevation implies that as contour lines are closer together, elevation changes more quickly.
Participants in the Shape Language group were encouraged to focus on the shape of the contour lines, and imagine how they might look in three dimensions. In both conditions, participants imitated the gestures made by the experimenter, and then answered questions about a set of practice maps using their own gestures.
Participants in a third, no instruction condition received no instructions on how to interpret the maps, but saw the same stimuli, and were asked open-ended questions about each map. Gesturing by the participant was neither encouraged nor discouraged. The language interventions consisted of two parts: an experimenter-led script, followed by open-ended questions.
For the experimenter-led script: the experimenter guided participants of the Elevation Language group through a series of sample topographic maps, describing how the lines provided information on how to analyze the maps and determine the elevation of specific contour lines; the experimenter guided participants of the Shape Language group through a the same sample topographic maps, describing how the lines provided information on how to analyze the maps and how the shape of the lines would allow them to visualize the three-dimensional shape of the terrain surface.
The experimenter-led script for both the Elevation Language group and the Shape Language group is provided in Appendix B. The experimenter read from a script while the participant looked at the maps being described. Throughout the reading of the script, the experimenter gestured on the maps by pointing out various features and tracing the contour lines. For the experimenter-led portion of the intervention, the maps and gestures were identical for the Elevation Language group and the Shape Language group.
The script itself was created by adapting the script used with the Pointing and Tracing group in Experiment 1 to emphasize elevation information. An analogous script for shape was then generated by revising each sentence of the script to emphasize shape information, specifically emphasizing transitioning from a two-dimensional pattern to a three-dimensional shape.
The two resulting scripts were then matched in structure as closely possible. Both scripts include definitions, examples, and comparisons of either elevation or shape. The second part of the intervention, the practice problems, was also adapted from Experiment 1. When participants were presented with maps 4 and 5 and terrains 4 and 5 shown in Fig.
After completing these tasks, participants in the Open-ended group also completed open-ended questions using the same practice maps as those presented to the intervention groups.
For the open-ended questions, instead of focusing on a particular type of information, participants were asked to describe each topographic map and were only prompted to give more detail. After completing the consent process, all participants completed the Map Experience Survey. After completing the measure, each participant was assigned to one of the three conditions pseudo-randomly accounting for high or low experience with topographic maps.
This resulted in 18 participants in the Elevation Language group, 19 participants in the Shape Language group, and 17 participants in the Open-ended group. Participants in all three groups then completed the TMA. Before starting the assessment, each participant was reminded to focus on the concept emphasized during the intervention elevation or shape.
Scoring of the TMA proceeded in the same manner as in Experiment 1, except where otherwise noted. To assess how the language intervention influenced spatial learning, we ran a two-factor ANOVA with group Elevation Language group and Shape Language group as a between-subjects factor and item-type elevation and shape as a within-subjects factor for the 22 TMA items where there was majority agreement on coding shown in Fig. Graph showing proportion correct on Topographic Map Assessment for groups by item-type for Experiment 2.
Bar graph showing proportion correct on the Topographic Map Assessment in the Elevation Language group, Shape Language group, and Open-ended group broken down by item-type elevation versus shape items from Experiment 2. Significance bars indicate a significant crossover interaction between item-type elevation versus shape and spatial language condition Elevation Language versus Shape Language.
To see if the two language intervention groups performed differently on each item-type, post-hoc pairwise comparisons were conducted. These differences in performance further suggest that improvement for each item-type varied depending on the verbal instructions received by the participants.
Results from this experiment suggest that the information conveyed in speech that accompanies gestures influences the type of information processed from topographic maps by novices.
While it is possible that language alone would be sufficient to facilitate learning in novices, the accompanying pointing and tracing gestures seem likely to have guided attention toward the relevant contour lines, allowing language to specify how to interpret them. Subsequent studies could employ a comparison group hearing the instructions without any gestures to reveal if language alone shapes learning.
There are several ways in which this effect of language could occur. Language may provide a conceptual framework used to interpret the map e. However, in considering the effects of language, it is important to note that there was little effect on the non-trained items e.
That is, specific instructional language does not focus attention on one type of information to the detriment of processing the other type, nor does it seem to enhance general map comprehension. Thus, facilitating topographic map comprehension probably requires explicitly communicating both elevation information and shape information, as we did in Experiment 1. Our results add to our understanding of the complex role of gestures in processing spatial information Atit et al. Experiment 1 showed that not all kinds of gestures used by experts are helpful for novices.
The pointing and tracing gestures that proved helpful may have worked similarly to basic code-cracking skills. Just as novice readers learn to associate sounds with visual symbols when the pairing between them is highlighted, in our study, using pointing and tracing gestures to highlight contour lines helped novice map users to associate contour lines with the elevation information they encode. On the other hand, novices in the 3D Gestures and Models group had difficulty making an association when three-dimensional gestures were used to highlight contour lines on a map.
Why the three-dimensional gestures were less effective remains an open, but important, question because expert geologists commonly use three-dimensional gestures to highlight information associated with three-dimensional structures on geologic maps Atit et al.
It is possible that a three-dimensional gesture provides too much information, both form and location information, for novices to process and retain, while pointing and tracing gestures, which provided information only about contour lines, presented less information and may have been easier to process.
In other words, the alignment between a contour line and a value of elevation is highlighted in a point and trace gesture, whereas a three-dimensional gesture conveys multiple mappings simultaneously.
An alternative and potentially interesting explanation is suggested by the finding of Experiment 2, that pointing and tracing gestures can support learning about three-dimensional shape when combined with a linguistic emphasis on shape.
While the three-dimensional gestures and models were intended to encode three-dimensional spatial relations spatially, the gesture representation may have conveyed information that was too specific. For example, students may have interpreted the information conveyed literally rather than symbolically e. In contrast, pointing to the topographical map pattern and emphasizing to novices the shape of the lines in language may have allowed understanding because the abstract spatial relations encoded in language may have provided novices with a strategy to interpret the contour lines spatially.
Understanding the interplay between gesture and language will be important for supporting learning in the classroom especially because field experts use both pointing and three-dimensional gestures in addition to speech when teaching complex spatial concepts.
Overall, Experiment 2 showed that specific verbal instructions, at least when paired with helpful gestures, facilitated specific skills: interpreting the meaning of contour lines in terms of elevation, or thinking about the shape of the represented terrain. Goldin-Meadow and colleagues have noted that a true understanding of the processing of information conveyed through both speech and gesture requires an understanding of the integration of both modalities e.
Here, we have shown that pointing and tracing gestures effectively highlight relevant and meaningful symbolic and spatial information, and that language can provide a framework for the kind of information that is learned. This finding suggests that, early in learning, gestures that guide attention to complex spatial information combined with conceptually focused speech are more helpful than gestures that refine spatial concepts.
In addition to topographic maps, there are a variety of diagrams that employ contour lines to represent continuous information both continuously and discontinuously e. An important future direction for research would be to examine how students learn to understand different kinds of isograms, and how experience with the diagrams in the form of speech and gestures influences learning.
Beyond topographic maps specifically, and isograms more generally, conceptually focused speech and highlighting gestures might be useful to teach disciplinary diagrams across the STEM disciplines.
As contour lines are employed to represent a wide range of content, such as three-dimensional mathematical functions and chemical state-change boundaries, it is critical to understand how these educational tools can be applied to potentially increase the effectiveness and efficiency of diagram education.
Furthermore, focused conceptual information in the accompanying speech can help the learner understand how to use the pertinent information. Here, instead of altering the diagram, we employ two tools that are regularly used in everyday conversation and while solving complex spatial problems, speech and gestures, to help students understand topographic maps.
As diagram interpretation is a critical skill in many STEM disciplines, understanding how these tools can be effectively used to teach them may have broader implications for learning in STEM classrooms.
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