Spatial Thinking in Geosciences
Kim Kastens
Earth
Mind
CIESIN Spatial Seminar, 05/05/05
Thanks to:
• Toru Ishikawa, L-DEO
• Lynn Liben, Penn State psychology dept
• Participants in GSA Pardee Symposium, October 2002:
“Toward a Better Understanding of the Complicated Earth:
Insights from Geologic Research, Education, and Cognitive
Science.”
• Participants in Wingspread Symposium, July 2002:
“Bringing Research on Learning to the Geosciences”
• Members of NRC Committee on “Enhancing Spatial
Thinking in K-12 Education”
Atmosphere
Lithosphere
Hydrosphere
Atmosphere
Lithosphere
Hydrosphere
Fertile research
areas at interfaces
Earth
Mind
Earth
Fertile research
area at interface
Mind
Earth
Mind
Fertile research
area at interface
How does the human mind comprehend and
reason about something as big, old, and
complicated as the Earth System?
How does the human mind comprehend and
reason about something as big, old, and
complicated as the Earth System?
• having evolved to think about spatial scales
ranging from a handsbreadth to the distance one
could walk in a day…
How does the human mind comprehend and
reason about something as big, old, and
complicated as the Earth System?
• having evolved to think about spatial scales
ranging from a handsbreadth to the distance one
could walk in a day…
• and temporal scales from a moment to a day to
a season to a year to a lifetime…
How does the human mind comprehend and
reason about something as big, old, and
complicated as the Earth System?
• having evolved to think about spatial scales
ranging from a handsbreadth to the distance one
could walk in a day…
• and temporal scales from a moment to a day to
a season to a year to a lifetime…
• and complexity scales from ??? to ???
“Oil is found in the
minds of men”
[and women]
Wallace Pratt, Humble Oil
… and so is every
other discovery and
insight in geoscience!
(Photo from www.nps.gov/gumo/ adhi/adhi3.htm)
Know the
strengths and
weaknesses
and limitations
of your
instruments.
www-mpl.ucsd.edu/research_programs/ deeptow.html
A Case Study:
Spatial Thinking in the Geosciences
A Case Study:
Spatial Thinking in the Geosciences
What are the spatial thinking tasks that
expert geoscientists excel at ….and that
geoscience students must master?
 Describing the shapes of natural objects, rigorously and
unambiguously.
 Categorizing objects by their shape.
 Ascribing meaning to the shape of a natural object.
• Recognizing a shape or pattern amid a cluttered noisy background.
 Visualizing a 3-D object or structure or process by examining
observations collected in one or two dimensions.
 Describing the position and orientation of objects in the real world
relative to a coordinate system anchored to the Earth.
 Recalling locations of previously observed geological phenomena.
 Mentally manipulating a volume by folding, faulting, and eroding.
• Envisioning the motion of objects or materials through space in three
dimensions.
• Making and interpreting spatial representations (including maps).
• Using spatial thinking to think about time.
 Using spatial thinking to think about non-spatial properties.
Describing the shapes of natural objects,
rigorously and unambiguously.
Crystallographer’s description of
crystal: “a symmetry plane at right
angles to each of the 2-fold rotation
axes, and four 3-fold axes of rotary
inversion.”
Figures 60 from: Hurlbut, Cornelius S. (1971) Dana’s
Manual of Mineralogy, 18th ed. New York: John Wiley
& Sons, Inc.
Figure A11 from: Hobbs, Bruce E., Winthrop
D. Means, and Paul F. Williams (1976) An
Outline of Structural Geology. New York: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Describing the shapes of natural objects,
rigorously and unambiguously.
Elements used in geoscientists’ descriptions of shapes:
• Symmetry
• Size
• Angular relationship
• Projections of 3-D objects onto a plane
Describing the shapes of natural objects,
rigorously and unambiguously.
Downs and Liben (1991) studied college students’ ability to
anticipate the form of a shadow cast by a shape rotated to
various angles.
Figure 5B in: Downs, Roger M. and Lynn S. Liben (1991) The Development of Expertise in Geography: A CognitiveDevelopmental Approach to Geographic Education. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81(2), pp.304-327.
Describing the shapes of natural objects,
rigorously and unambiguously.
They found that college students performance on projective tasks
is poor when the shapes are three dimensional.
Figure 2 in: Merriwether, Ann M. and Lynn S. Liben (1997) Adults’ Failures on Euclidean and Projective Spatial Tasks:
Implications for Characterizing Spatial Cognition. Journal of Adult Development, Vol. 4, No. 2.
Describing the shapes of natural objects,
rigorously and unambiguously.
Question:
• What is known about how people perceive
symmetry?
• What is known about how people estimate size and
distance?
• What is known about how people estimate angles?
Classifying or categorizing an object by its shape.
Marshak, Stephen, (200) Earth Portrait of a Planet, new York, W.W. Norton &
Co. Inc., Appendix B-2 Flow Charts for Identifying Minerals .
Classifying or categorizing an object by its shape.
Collins and Quillian’s (1969) seminal paper on how knowledge
is represented in the brain, postulated that concepts are
represented as hierarchies of inter-connected concept-nodes.
A schematic
diagram of
the sort of
hierarchical,
semantic
networks
proposed by
Collins and
Quillian
(1969).
M. W. Eysenck & M. T. Keane (1995). Cognitive psychology: A student's handbook. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
Classifying or categorizing an object by its shape.
They tested this hypothesis by measuring the time to answer
questions that require a search from one node to another, e.g..
“Is a canary a bird?” vs. “Is a canary an animal?”
M. W. Eysenck & M. T. Keane (1995). Cognitive psychology: A student's handbook. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
Classifying or categorizing an object by its shape.
Questions:
•Did humans evolve a brain that organizes knowledge
in hierarchies in order to make sense of a world which
is inherently organized that way?
or
•Do we impose hierarchical organizational schema on
nature because that is how our brains are good at
organizing knowledge?
Ascribing meaning to the shape of a natural object.
Distribution of modern species of planktonic
foraminifera. Figure 16-1 in: Kennett, James (1982) Marine
Geology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Mylonite. Note fine grain size and strong
foliation probably caused by intense shearing.
Source: http://www.glg.ed.ac.uk/cgi-bin-2/config2-spvft
Source: http://www.geolab.unc.edu/Petunia/IgMetAtlas/meta-micro/mylonite.X.html
Ascribing meaning to the shape of a natural object.
Misconception Research:
Kusnick’s (2002) analysis of
student narratives about
rock formation found that
many students believe that
pebbles “grow” or accrete.
Ascribing meaning to the shape of a natural object.
Question:
• How do people go from observations about shape,
geometry, and pattern to inferences about process
and causality?
 Form follows function
 Form reflects formative processes
 Meaning is inferred from co-occurrence under
known conditions.
 Meaning is inferred in situation with only one
dominant causal factor.
Visualizing a 3-D object or structure or process
by examining observations collected in
one or two dimensions.
Marie Tharp in her Lamont Hall
office, c. 1961.
World Ocean Floor
by Bruce C. Heezen
and Marie Tharp.
Visualizing a 3-D object or structure or process
by examining observations collected in
one or two dimensions.
Visualizing a 3-D object or structure or process
by examining observations collected in
one or two dimensions.
David Marr’s (1982) studies of visual perception emphasize that we
have vast experience translating from 2-D data to 3-D mental models.
Visualizing a 3-D object or structure or process
by examining observations collected in
one or two dimensions.
Question
• Can we build on this notion of primal sketch and 2 1/2
dimensional sketch as a way to help learners go from 1-D
or 2-D viewer-centered (or sensor-centered) data to a 3-D
mental model not tied to viewpoint?
Describing the position and orientation of objects in the
real world relative to a coordinate system anchored to
the Earth.
Describing the position and orientation of objects in the
real world relative to a coordinate system anchored to
the Earth.
Describing the position and orientation of objects in the
real world relative to a coordinate system anchored to
the Earth.
Levinson (1996) describes 3 frames of reference…
S. C. Levinson (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux's question: Crosslinguistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.
A. Peterson, L. Nadel, & M. F. Garrett (Eds.), Language and space (pp. 109-169). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Describing the position and orientation of objects in the
real world relative to a coordinate system anchored to
the Earth.
… and has designed tasks to reveal whether subjects have employed
intrinsic, relative, or absolute frames of reference during the task.
S. C. Levinson (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux's question: Crosslinguistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.
A. Peterson, L. Nadel, & M. F. Garrett (Eds.), Language and space (pp. 109-169). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Describing the position and orientation of objects in the
real world relative to a coordinate system anchored to
the Earth.
Subjects in western
cultures overwhelmingly
used a relative frame of
reference...
S. C. Levinson (1996). Frames
of reference and Molyneux's
question: Crosslinguistic
evidence. In P. Bloom, M. A.
Peterson, L. Nadel, & M. F.
Garrett (Eds.), Language and
space (pp. 109-169).
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
… but that
tendency is not
the same across
cultures.
Describing the position and orientation of objects in the
real world relative to a coordinate system anchored to
the Earth.
Question:
• How can we foster learners’ ability to think in absolute
frames of reference within a language which seems to
favor relative frames of reference?
• How do people convert information from a relative
frame of reference to an absolute frame of reference?
Recalling locations of previously observed
geological phenomena.
I know I’ve seen
something like this
before.… Now
where was that?
Recalling locations of previously observed
geological phenomena.
McBurney et al. (1997)
and Eals and Silverman
(1994) test subjects’ recall
of location of objects.
Figure 3 from: Eals, Marion and Irwin Silverman (1994) The
Hunter-Gatherer Theory of Spatial Sex Differences: Proximate
Factors Mediating the Female Advantage in Recall of Object
Arrays. Ethnology and Sociobiology, 15: 95-105.
Recalling locations of previously observed
geological phenomena.
In contrast to many spatial skills, they find females out-perform males.
Memory Score as a Function of Sex
Male
Female
Mean
224.6
179.7
SD
38.4
30.7
Note: Higher numbers indicate poorer performance.
McBurney, D. H., S. J. C. Galin, et al. (1997). "Superior spatial memory of women: stronger evidence for
the gathering hypothesis.” Evolution and Human Behavior 18: 165-174.
Recalling locations of previously observed
geological phenomena.
They attribute this to women’s evolutionary role as gatherers who
needed to remember the location of medicinal and edible plants.
"Rice Gatherers" by Seth Eastman, 1867, from the Capitol, Washington, D.C.
Recalling locations of previously observed
geological phenomena.
Questions
• Can the evolutionary dimorphism hypothesis be tested?
• Can we extrapolate from a table top to a geologist’s
entire world of remembered outcrops?
• Can we extrapolate from a half hour experiment to a
geologist’s lifetime of field experiences?
• What other aspects of location memory should be
studied (in addition to gender contrast) to support
geoscience experts and geoscience learners?
Mentally manipulating a volume by folding,
faulting and eroding.
Figure 24.13 in: Ramsay, John G. and Martin I. Huber (1987) The Techniques of Modern Structural Geology, Volume 2:
Folds and Fractures. New York: Academic Press; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers.
Mentally manipulating a volume by folding,
faulting and eroding.
Paper folding tasks
are classic measures
of spatial visualization
ability.
J. Eliot & I. M. Smith (1983). An international directory of spatial tests. Windsor, UK: NFER-NELSON.
Mentally manipulating a volume by folding,
faulting and eroding.
Question:
• What has been learned from >50 years of studying
paper folding, that can be applied to thinking about
the folding of geological strata?
Using spatial thinking to think about non-spatial
properties.
Using spatial thinking to think about non-spatial
properties.
Questions
• Why is spatialization of non-spatial information so
powerful?
• How can we help learners learn to harness the power
of spatialization?
Lamont Research
 Describing the shapes of natural objects
 Categorizing objects by their shape.
 Ascribing meaning to the shape of a natural object.
• Recognizing a shape or pattern amid a cluttered noisy background.
 Visualizing a 3-D object or structure or process.
 Describing the position and orientation of objects in the real world
relative to a coordinate system anchored to the Earth.
 Recalling locations of previously observed geological phenomena.
 Mentally manipulating a volume by folding, faulting, and eroding.
• Envisioning the motion of objects or materials through space in three
dimensions.
 Making and interpreting spatial representations (including maps).
• Using spatial thinking to think about time.
 Using spatial thinking to think about non-spatial properties.
How do geology students learn to visualize 3-D geologic
structures from the limited information available in outcrops?
How do geology students learn to visualize 3-D geologic
structures from the limited information available in outcrops?
How do geology students learn to visualize 3-D geologic
structures from the limited information available in outcrops?
3-D variant of Piaget’s water level task.
Lamont Research
 Describing the shapes of natural objects
 Categorizing objects by their shape.
 Ascribing meaning to the shape of a natural object.
• Recognizing a shape or pattern amid a cluttered noisy background.
 Visualizing a 3-D object or structure or process.
 Describing the position and orientation of objects in the real world
relative to a coordinate system anchored to the Earth.
 Recalling locations of previously observed geological phenomena.
 Mentally manipulating a volume by folding, faulting, and eroding.
• Envisioning the motion of objects or materials through space in three
dimensions.
 Making and interpreting spatial representations (including maps).
• Using spatial thinking to think about time.
 Using spatial thinking to think about non-spatial properties.
How do children learn to “translate” from
3-D reality to 2-D map?
REALITY
MAP
translate
Profile View
Intricately detailed
Bird's eye View
Spare, schematic
Changes
day/night
& seasonally
Unchanging
Reality is
bigger than
the child
The map is
smaller than
the child
How do children learn to “translate” from
3-D reality to 2-D map?.
How do children learn to “translate” from
3-D reality to 2-D map?
Baseline
How do children learn to “translate” from
3-D reality to 2-D map?
Baseline
Reflecting
Among the reflecting
students, we see:
• few clue-answers that
are inaccurate
descriptions of reality, but
many clue-answers that
are insufficient to pinpoint
sticker,
• many sticker
placements that are
wrong, but wrong in a
way that is consistent with
the corresponding clueanswer.
How do children learn to “translate” from
3-D reality to 2-D map?.
Difficult
Not so difficult
How do children learn to “translate” from
3-D reality to 2-D map?.
Verbal description:
• The orange sticker is
on the mansion.
• It’s on a corner of the
mansion.
• It’s on the corner
closest to the path that
leads to the pond.
How do children learn to “translate” from
3-D reality to 2-D map?
Baseline
Reflecting
Verbal Description
How well do maps communicate complex
information to policy-makers?
Question 3:
Complete the following sentence on the basis of threshold maps and
a forecast map:
“The probability is _____% that Charleston, South Carolina, will receive
more than _____ mm of precipitation”
• Results:
Above-normal precip. cities:
Major types of misconceptions:
• (below_%) = 100 – (above_%).
• If classified as above-normal,
(below_%) = 0;
If classified as below-normal,
(above_%) = 0.
Bottom Line
• Fascinating questions
• Few answers
• Lots of opportunity
Earth
Mind