Impacts of geographical knowledge, spatial ability and environmental cognition on image searches supported by GIS software

Google Earth search function was used to study the impacts of small-scale spatial ability, large-scale environmental cognition, and geographical knowledge on new technology usage. The participants were 153 junior high students from central Taiwan. Geography grades served as indicators of prior knowledge, mental rotation and abstract reasoning skills as indicators of spatial ability, and sketch maps of school neighborhoods as indicators of environmental cognition (including landmark representation, intersection representation, and frame of reference). Lastly, the authors announced the landmarks searching worksheet and asked the participants to accomplish 16 familiar and unfamiliar landmark searching tasks using Google Earth with keyword search function disabled. The result showed the strongest predictor of landmark searching performance is ‘frame of reference’ in environmental cognition, followed by ‘mental rotation’ of spatial ability, ‘landmark representation’ of environmental cognition, and geographical knowledge. Google Earth landmark searches require complex cognitive processing; therefore, our conclusion is that GIS-supported image search activities give students good practice of active knowledge construction.