Animating Cartographic Meaning: Unveiling the Impact of Pictorial Symbol Motion Speed in Preattentive Processing

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author(s),

 

I congratulate you on the submitted manuscript. It has a very clear, specific focus (namely: the impact of animation speed of cartographic symbols as preattentive feature), and the paper stay on this clearly-defined scope. The paper reads quick and fluently, it is very well structured, and thus is a recommended addition to the literature overall.

That said, the paper requires minor-to-moderate revision on the following points:

 
(1) Clarification of the meaning of 'speed classes', 'speed distributions', and their relation to the process. Not all readers are familiar with those cartographic distribution classes, and how they relate to the animation process. Also, please show an actual, representative example of what the experiment looks like and what the participants of the study are actually shown. This is hard to infer from textual description.
 
(2) Revise the research questions and adapt the conclusion: look at the comment related to to the RQ-discussion in the 'Conclusion' section: either remove RQ 2, or expand the hypothesis, discussion and design guide in the conclusion. Revise or remove RQ 3.
 
(3) Adapt the conclusions.
 
(4) Remove the explicit gender information of the participants in section 2.2
 
(5) General grammar /  language / phrasing revisions - this is fairly minor for this manuscript, though still needs to be done.
 
(6) Reconsider literature item choice in the 'References'.

 

I am positive that you can act positively on those revision points for a post-revision publication.

 

Kind regards,

The reviewer

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review. Due to the extensive nature of the comments, I have prepared a document where I address each point raised by the Reviewer individually. Please find the attached file for further details.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

A great paper, but I think the first sentence in the introduction is not consistent nor clear without empirical evidence, "Animated cartography plays a crucial role in modern society due to its significant contributions in various fields".

Unless you have empirical evidence to support its "crucial role" (which means planes will crash, cars will explode, trains will fall over, people will die, etc, without animated cartography), start out by pointing out the potential of animated cartography, and its contributions remain limited. Your study contributes to prior work and extends it. 

One more quibble, which needs some attention in this paper but is really a matter for future research: geography matters. Where an animated symbol occurs on a map and in what graphical relationship it stands to other symbols and textual elements will be of vast importance for interpreting all symbols. How animated symbols are different in different geographical relationships is a fascinating question. In this paper please point to this issue for future research. 

A final suggestion: include more recent literature too in the references given on line 72 of page 2. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review. Due to the extensive nature of the comments, I have prepared a document where I address each point raised by the Reviewer individually. Please find the attached file for further details.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a relevant and current topic for IJGI.

However, the work developed is very initial to be submitted to the journal. The authors should extend the experiments as research questions are not sufficiently answered. Either that or they should diminish the objectives and submit the work as a work in progress in a relevant conference.

Early in the paper, the authors declare that “The primary objective of this study is to evaluate preattentiveness in the visual processing of dynamic pictorial symbols.”. This is not achieved. They also state that “Specifically, it involves identifying the motion velocity parameters for cartographic animated pictorial symbols that contribute to the preattentive perception of the target symbols.” This is also not achieved. The authors propose a set of symbols that they have designed and provide no information on how they were designed. Then they use a set of velocity parameters on these symbols and develop an experiment around these symbols and parameters. They then discuss the results of this experiment. So what they do is evaluate how preattentiveness evolves or improves when using the chosen attributes in these specific symbols.  

The authors should lower the expectations of the reader and describe the research and experiment for what it is.

Form:

1.      Writing is fair. There are a few typos that need to be reviewed. Additionally, some sentences are too long an lack clarity. One example is the last sentence of the first paragraph in section 2.

2.      Structure is fair. Please review empty sections.

Sections

Abstract. The description of the results at the end should inform on actual results and not on what was not achieved.

Introduction: Sentences are too large and not clear in relation with the assertions taken from the related work. It is difficult to related the assertions provided by the authors with what is put by the related work in their paper (e.g. 3rd sentence of the 3rd paragraph). Preattentiveness, as it is relevant for this work, should be thoroughly defined (not just as an afterthought, at the end of a paragraph). The use and objectives of eye tracking should also be described (related work).

The authors list “potential research questions”. This is not correct. The right research questions, for the paper should be addressed. None of these questions are answered in the context of the paper. This is very early work that needs to be developed and later resubmitted.

Section 2:

The issue with the design of the experiment has been described above. The paper is lacking on the choice of symbols and specifically the characteristics of their design. Also, detailed images should also be provided for people who print the papers.

The description of the speed classes in relation to the symbols is very confusing. When the authors refer to the “fastest symbol” they are actually referring to the use of a particular class of speed on a particular symbol, which is not clear at all. Also the decision to where symbols were located in administrative units is quite ad hoc.

The use of specific type of equipment is also a limitation. A section on limitations (more complete than what is provided) is also a must in this type of paper.

Section 2.4 also needs much clarification: specifically the last sentence of the first paragraph and assertion relating to the participants of groups that underwent calibration. The last paragraph of the section is describing the whole experiment ? Not clear.

Section 3

Results’ graphics are confusing and their usefulness is debatable. Even the definition of top-down and bottom-up approaches is not clear as they do not apply directly in terms of what the expressions mean.

The authors describe and quantify their results but do not critically evaluate each result. What do they mean?

ANOVA should be described for the purpose of the audience of the journal.

 

Section 4 – discussion

Not having any information on the design of the symbols it is difficult to take the discussion into account. For example, the statement “This emphasizes the importance of understanding the nuances of symbol representation, shedding light on the intricate relation ship between movement characteristics and symbol design in the cartographic context”. What is the role of symbol design in these results and discussion ?

 

When the authors state that  “The most useful motion distributions for designing dynamic point symbols, from the perspective of the study, were found to be those based on exponential or arithmetic scales”, the issue of the design of the symbols cannot be included in this way, into the argument. And additionally, the same can be said for “These findings provide valuable insights for designing dynamic symbols, emphasizing simplicity as an essential factor based on the research results.”

 Given these arguments, I propose that the authors redesign the paper as a work in progress to be submitted to a conference on the topic.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

 Writing is fair. There are a few typos that need to be reviewed. Additionally, some sentences are too long an lack clarity. One example is the last sentence of the first paragraph in section 2.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review. Due to the extensive nature of the comments, I have prepared a document where I address each point raised by the Reviewer individually. Please find the attached file for further details.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper examines the visual cognition of dynamic variables in animated map symbols, which is a valuable topic. However, I hold a different perspective on studying animation speed as a single variable. In my view, symbols that capture people's visual attention should be fundamentally distinct from other symbols, whether through static or dynamic visual variables. Focusing solely on the speed of an animated symbol while disregarding differences between frames is clearly unreasonable. For instance, if the difference between two frames of an animated symbol is minimal, even appropriate animation speed will not attract attention. Therefore, it is inappropriate to use animation speed as a variable in analyzing pre-attention processes without elaborating on changes in symbol graphics. It is suggested that the author consider using rate of change as a variable to analyze its impact on pre-attention processes.

In addition, it is suggested that the author make better design for the illustrations in Figure 3 and Figure 5, so that the reader can understand the connotation of the figure more easily.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review. Due to the extensive nature of the comments, I have prepared a document where I address each point raised by the Reviewer individually. Please find the attached file for further details.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has effectively addressed the issues raised in the review comments and made substantial revisions to the article. I think it has reached publication level.