The perceptual interaction of graphical attributes: Configurality, stimulus homogeneity, and object integration

Abstract

Researchers have proposed that graphical efficacy may be determined, in part, by the nature of the perceptual interactions that exist between attributes used to create graphical displays, One extreme type of interaction is integrality, in which two or more physical dimensions are represented as a single psychological dimension in the observer. An alternative type of interaction is configurality, in which a global emergent dimension is available to the observer in addition to the component attributes, Thirteen stimulus sets, each composed of attributes commonly used in the design of graphs, were submitted to the performance-based diagnostics of integrality and configurality. Analyses suggest a continuum of configurality among the present stimulus sets, with little evidence for integral graphical attributes. The configural pattern of results was more common when two identical dimensions were paired (homogeneous stimuli) than when two different dimensions were paired (heterogeneous stimuli). However, there was no evidence that pairs of dimensions belonging to a single object (object integration) were any more configural than dimensions belonging to different objects. Object integration was, however, consistently related to inefficient performance in tasks requiring the filtering of one of two component dimensions.How may geometric properties and color be most effectively employed to communicate quantitative information? What, in short, makes a good graphical display? These questions represent the research agenda for what DeSanctis (1984) calls comparative graphics. One approach to comparative graphics has been to systematically study the accuracy with which we can identify and discriminate stimulus levels along continuous physical dimensions, and this information is routinely presented in introductory discussions of display design (e.g., Hutchingson, 1981;McCormick & Sanders, 1982). However, this tradition, which emphasizes the coding of individual quantitative variables as individual physical dimensions, has recently been supplemented by interest in the perceptual interactions that may occur when combinations of such dimensions are used to represent multiple variables. In the present paper, we consider the utility of two notions of attribute interaction-dimensional integrality and dimensional configurality-for the prediction of graphical efficacy.

Using Selective Attention Theory to Design Bivariate Point Symbols

“…Since there is no interaction between the dimensions, performance on the condensation task suffers accordingly (Bennett and Flach, 1992). Psychological studies suggest that the following stimulus dimensions are separable: size and value (Handel and Imai, 1972;Gottwald and Garner, 1975;Garner, 1977;Kemler and Smith, 1979;Smith, 1980), size of circle and angle of diameter (Garner and Felfoldy, 1970;Schumann and Wang, 1980), the tilt of a line within a form (Egeth, 1966), color and orientation (Carswell and Wickens, 1990), and the orientation of multiple lines (Carswell and Wickens, 1990).…”

“…Furthermore, configural dimensions will facilitate the condensation task because the emerging property can be used as the basis for classification (Bennett and Flach, 1992). Psychological research has found that the repeated used of the same dimension promotes configurality (Garner, 1978;Carswell and Wickens, 1990). Other stimulus dimensions that have been identified as configural include vertical symmetry and parallelism (Pomerantz and Garner, 1973;Pomerantz and Pristach, 1989), as well as the vertical extents of line graphs and the orientations of folding fans (Carswell and Wickens, 1990).…”

Effects of spatial compatibility on integration processes in graph comprehension

“…Earlier studies mainly demonstrated the importance of spatial design characteristics for integration processes within different task requirements (Carswell & Wickens, 1990;Gillan, 1995;Lohse, 1991). However, in the past 12 years, influential studies have emerged that have been explicitly devoted to integration processes (e.g., Bryant & Tversky, 1999;Zacks & Tversky, 1999).…”

Arrows in Comprehending and Producing Mechanical Diagrams

“…Developing principles for designing effective diagrams has been a concern of graphic designers (e.g., Horn, 1998;Mijksenaar & Westentorp, 1999;Tufte, 1983Tufte, , 1990Tufte, , 1997, cognitive scientists (e.g., Carswell & Wickens, 1990;Kieras & Bovair, 1984;Kosslyn, 1994;Larkin & Simon, 1987;Narayanan & Hegarty, 1998;Novick, 2001;Pinker, 1990;Stenning & Oberlander, 1995;Tversky, 1995Tversky, , 2001Tversky et al, in press), statisticians (e.g., Cleveland, 1985;Wainer, 1984;Wilkinson, 1999), semioticians (Bertin, 1983;McCloud, 1994), computer scientists (e.g., Card, Mackinlay, & Shneiderman, 1999;Glasgow, Narayanan, & Chandrasekeran, 1995;Ware, 2000), classicists (e.g., Netz, 1999;Small, 2003), and educators (e.g., Mayer, 2001;Winn, 1987). Here we focus on diagrams of mechanical systems, a domain of interest in many cognitive, computer, and educational inves-tigations (e.g., Hegarty & Just, 1993;Kieras and Bovair, 1984;Mayer & Gallini, 1990).…”