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Cognitive Fit in Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Tasks
Here we examine studies that evaluated cognitive fit in multi-criteria decision-making tasks. The
studies investigated were in map-related domains. Table 8.6 presents the details of the studies
identified. We first present the studies and then evaluate the findings.
Studies of Cognitive Fit in Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Tasks
We identified two studies related to multi-criteria decision making in map-based domains in our
analysis of articles that used the theory of cognitive fit.
The first study is that of Smelcer and Carmel (1997) who assessed the effect of display format,
maps and tables, on three different types of geographic relationships (proximity, adjacency, and
containment), and three levels of task difficulty (high, medium, and low). Proximity refers to “how
far apart” the objects of interest are; adjacency is used to indicate two objects that are “next to each
other”; containment refers to the fact that a two-dimensional object “could contain other objects.”
Smelcer and Carmel argue that maps will support all three relationships better than tables because
each contains spatial elements. The researchers used problem-solving time as the dependent vari-
able because of the difficulties of simultaneously working with interval and ratio data in determin-
ing accuracy. The researchers report that there were no significant differences in error rates, and
they include both correct and incorrect responses in the analysis of time. They found that proxim-
ity and adjacency tasks were indeed better supported by maps than by tables. Their findings for
containment tasks were not supported, however: containment tasks resulted in equivalent perform-
ance (time) for graphs and tables.
The findings on containment tasks can be explained by the fact that containment is a symbolic
rather than a spatial task and a map would not therefore aid this type of problem solving. Perusal
of the researchers' table and map representations for the containment task (Table 6: tabular;
Figure 5: map) reveals that the different objects contained in a space are represented as icons in
both. In the table representation, the icons relevant to a space are located next to each other in the
same row of the table. In the map representation, the icons are located in two-dimensional space
within the specific area under investigation. Because of the essentially similar representation, it is
not surprising that there was little difference in time to extract the required information from
tables and maps.
The second study in this area is by Dennis and Carte (1998). In a study quite similar to that of
Smelcer and Carmel, the researchers examined the effects of maps and tables on accuracy and time
of completing both adjacency and containment tasks. However, they hypothesized that contain-
ment tasks are symbolic in nature rather than spatial, as noted above. Further, they examined par-
ticipants' decision processes by examining the worksheets they used while conducting the two
types of tasks. They hypothesized and found that: (1) map-based representations induced percep-
tual decision processes and that tabular representations induced analytical processes; (2) accuracy
on adjacency tasks (spatial) was better with maps than with tables, while accuracy on containment
tasks (symbolic) was better with tables than with graphs. On the other hand, while they found that
time on adjacency tasks was better with maps than tables, they also found that time on containment
tasks was also better with maps than with tables.
Comparing their findings with the original formulation of cognitive fit, Dennis and Carte state
that “the predicted performance effects of CFT (… cognitive fit theory…) cannot be extended
from elementary tasks to multi-criteria geographic tasks.” This statement is correct. However, this
experiment and its findings should be investigated in terms of the theory of cognitive fit extended
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