Gardony Map Drawing Analyzer: Software for quantitative analysis of sketch maps.

Abstract

Sketch maps are effective tools for assessing spatial memory. However, despite their widespread use in cognitive science research, sketch map analysis techniques remain unstandardized and carry limitations. In the present article, we present the Gardony Map Drawing Analyzer (GMDA), an open-source software package for sketch map analysis. GMDA combines novel and established analysis techniques into a graphical user interface that permits rapid computational sketch map analysis. GMDA calculates GMDA-unique measures based on pairwise comparisons between landmarks, as well as bidimensional regression parameters (Friedman & Kohler, 2003), which together reflect sketch map quality at two levels: configural and individual landmark. The configural measures assess the overall landmark configuration and provide a whole-map analysis. Individual landmark measures, introduced in GMDA, assess individual landmark placement and indicate how individual landmarks contribute to the configural scores. Together, these measures provide a more complete psychometric picture of sketch map analysis, allowing for comparisons between sketch maps and between landmarks. The calculated measures reflect specific and cognitively relevant aspects of interlandmark spatial relationships, including distance and angular representation. GMDA supports complex environments (up to 48 landmarks) and two software modes that capture aspects of maps not addressed by existing techniques, such as landmark size and shape variation and interlandmark containment relationships. We describe the software and its operation and present a formal specification of calculation procedures for its unique measures. We then validate the software by demonstrating the capabilities and reliability of its measures using simulation and experimental data. The most recent version of GMDA is available at www.aarongardony.com/tools/map-drawing-analyzer.