Effects of visual complexity and ambiguity of verbal instructions on target identification

Abstract

Research has shown that visual complexity and the ambiguity of verbal information affect the speed and accuracy of locating targets during visual search. The higher the visual complexity and description ambiguity, the slower and poorer the target identification performance. Because these factors are seldom studied in combination (even though they regularly co-occur), it is unclear whether they would interact. Therefore, in two experiments, participants viewed images that displayed cartoon-like characters and had to correctly identify a character from a verbal description under conditions of low/ high visual complexity and low/high description ambiguity (manipulated withinsubjects). Results revealed that high ambiguity descriptions resulted in lower accuracy and slower response times. However, our manipulation of visual complexity did not affect performance or response times either in itself or in interaction with verbal ambiguity. Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications, for instance, for multimedia learning.

Effectiveness of eye movement modeling examples in problem solving: The role of verbal ambiguity and prior knowledge

“…For instance, experiments in cognitive science have shown that ambiguity can arise due to the visual context (e.g., multiple objects that the referent might refer to; Allopenna, Magnuson, & Tanenhaus, 1998;Eberhard, Spivey-Knowlton, Sedivy, & Tanenhaus, 1995), the lack of specificity of the verbal information (e.g., referring to a target without verbal location descriptions; Louwerse & Bangerter, 2010), or a lack of prior knowledge (e.g., lack of background knowledge about a to be inspected and discussed painting; Richardson, Dale, & Kirkham, 2007;Experiment 2). When verbal referents are ambiguous for any of those reasons, it will take listeners more time to locate the relevant (i.e., target) information, if they are able to locate it at all (Louwerse & Bangerter, 2010;Van Marlen, Van Wermeskerken, & Van Gog, 2018).…”

Visual Performance Assessment of Videos—A Case Study of the Game “Spot the Difference”

“…Huang and Pashler [9] indicated that the difficulty of a visual search affected efficiency. Marlen et al [10] also found that high visual complexity and high verbal ambiguity resulted in a low accuracy and slow response time on visual search tasks. In this study, the white color was set for the without background context and scenery was set for the with background context.…”

“…Huang and Pashler [9] also pointed out that the difficulty of the visual search test affects the search efficiency. According to Marlen et al [10], the background complexity and the clear or fuzzy description of the target affect the search speed and accuracy. It is concluded that the higher the complexity and description ambiguity are, the slower and harder it is to find the target.…”

Did You Get That? Predicting Learners’ Comprehension of a Video Lecture from Visualizations of Their Gaze Data

“…Usually, selecting visual information is done by looking at the information, so we can measure the selection process with an eye‐tracking device (Jarodzka et al., 2017 ; Kok & Jarodzka, 2017a ). Note here that looking at the relevant information is a necessary (but not sufficient) first step for organizing and integrating it with existing knowledge (Kok & Jarodzka, 2017b ): If a learner does not “follow” what the teacher is currently talking about, for example, if the teacher uses jargon that the learner does not know yet or if teachers verbal utterances are ambiguous, learners could have trouble locating the visual information related to the verbal information (Van Marlen, van Wermeskerken, & van Gog, 2019 ). This could lead to the learner missing (i.e., not selecting) important visual information and thus not organizing verbal and visual information together, and integrating it with existing knowledge.…”