Understanding how external media such as maps and diagrams influence spatial learning and reasoning is crucial to improving spatial learning and to education. Maps and charts highlight spatial relations that can be difficult, and at times impossible, to perceive on the basis of direct experience. For example, by looking at a map, one could easily see the relative spatial position of several cities across the United States. This information would be very difficult to acquire directly from travel or to describe in words. The unique perspective and scale of maps make perceptible, and cognitively tractable, spatial relations that might otherwise remain opaque. Thus maps can affect cognition and contribute to its development.
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