[Icacogvis] Merve Keskin - PhD thesis

[Merve Keskin]

Dear all,

I would like to let you know that I recently defended my PhD entitled Exploring the Cognitive Processes of Map Users Employing Eye Tracking and EEG. It was a joint-PhD between Ghent University and Istanbul Technical University and an interdisciplinary research bringing experimental psychologists, HCI experts and cartographers together. For those of you who might be interested, I am sharing a short summary of my research as follows:

Understanding how our brain copes with complex visual information is a challenge for both cognitive psychology and cartography. If we, cartographers, pursue to design better and more usable cartographic products, we require building a better knowledge on the spatial abilities and limitations of map users. This thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of the cognitive processes of expert and novice map users in learning, acquiring and remembering information presented via digital 2D static maps. To be able to gain insight into the users’ behaviors while they interact with maps (e.g. attention, cognitive load), eye tracking and electroencephalogram (EEG) are enabled as synchronized data collection methods due to them being non-invasive and capturing direct responses of cognitive activities.

This research discovered that expertise is not as influential as we think when it comes to simple spatial memory tasks using maps designed for general audience and high cognitive load is not necessarily linked with low cognitive performance. However, experts and novices develop different strategies to approach the map-learning tasks and this needs to be researched in more depth including other individual characteristics affecting spatial cognition.

If you would like to have further information, you can read the thesis here: https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8684280

We also published a short blog post related to my thesis on the webpage of ISPRS WG IV/9 Geovisualization, Augmented and Virtual Reality: https://geoviz.casa.ucl.ac.uk/2020/12/29/recent-phd-thesis-exploring-the-cognitive-processes-of-map-users-employing-eye-tracking-and-eeg/

Currently, I am looking for post-doc opportunities in cognitive cartography, user studies and related fields. I am open to any idea, discussion, feedback or suggestion from you.

Kind regards,
Merve Keskin
<https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8684280>



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lazarus.elte.hu/pipermail/icacogvis/attachments/20210127/6a0aa0bf/attachment.html>