UNPACKING COGNITIVE BENEFITS OF DISTRIBUTED COMPLEX VISUAL DISPLAYS FOR EXPERT AND NOVICE SCIENTISTS

[摘要] The current research focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of two common types of spatially different organizations of information (i.e., spatially stacked vs. distributed) and their impact on science problem solving. The research is based on the premise that we must better understand the spatial organization of information from the perspective of cognitive performance and expertise theories to further our theoretical understanding and provide a practical guide for using and developing effective information visualizations. A new theoretical decomposition and matched analytic technique using eye-tracking is introduced, and is used to tease apart interactions with expertise. Seventy novice scientists and 38 experts participated in the study. They solved a data interpretation problem using either a distributed or a stacked display. Overall, novices took longer to solve the problem when they work with a distributed display than with a stacked display, and eye-tracking data suggests the effect is due to information overload and data management time. By contrast, experts showed a reverse trend (i.e., faster problem solving with distributed displays), being better able to manage complex information. As for the underlying mechanism, three factors(i.e., information internalization, information access, and information externalization costs) were examined and found critical to explain the effect. Both groups showed trade offs among the three factors as an adaptive behavior for effectively balancing the information access costs.

[发布机构] the University of Pittsburgh