The role of cultural background in using adjunct displays.

Undergraduates in Taiwan and the United States read a short text that was accompanied by an outline, graphic organizer, or knowledge map, and then took a test and completed a questionnaire. In terms of comprehension, findings were unsurprising as Taiwanese students performed better than US students, and both groups learned more using graphic organizers than they did with knowledge maps. In terms of perceptions, however, Taiwanese students perceived knowledge maps to be the most reader-friendly, whereas US students found them to be relatively reader-unfriendly. Although “map shock” (Blankenship & Dansereau, 2001) may help to explain why US students struggle to effectively use knowledge maps, computational inefficiency perhaps best explains why students who may be more familiar with knowledge maps also have difficulty in learning from them.