Peebles David
Department of Behavioural Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield, UK.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2008 Jun;14(2):85-100. doi: 10.1037/1076-898X.14.2.85.
Two experiments investigated effects of emergent features on perceptual judgments of comparative magnitude in three diagrammatic representations: kiviat charts, bar graphs, and line graphs. Experiment 1 required participants to compare individual values; whereas in Experiment 2 participants had to integrate several values to produce a global comparison. In Experiment 1, emergent features of the diagrams resulted in significant distortions of magnitude judgments, each related to a common geometric illusion. Emergent features are also widely believed to underlie the general superiority of configural displays, such as kiviat charts, for tasks requiring the integration of information. Experiment 2 tested the extent of this benefit using diagrams with a wide range of values. Contrary to the results of previous studies, the configural display produced the poorest performance compared to the more separable displays. Moreover, the pattern of responses suggests that kiviat users switched from an integration strategy to a sequential one depending on the shape of the diagram. The experiments demonstrate the powerful interaction between emergent visual properties and cognition and reveal limits to the benefits of configural displays for integration tasks.
两项实验研究了在三种图表表示形式（基维特图表、柱状图和折线图）中，涌现特征对比较大小的感知判断的影响。实验1要求参与者比较单个值；而在实验2中，参与者必须整合多个值以进行整体比较。在实验1中，图表的涌现特征导致大小判断出现显著扭曲，每种扭曲都与一种常见的几何错觉有关。涌现特征也被广泛认为是配置显示（如基维特图表）在需要整合信息的任务中普遍具有优势的基础。实验2使用具有广泛值范围的图表测试了这种优势的程度。与先前研究的结果相反，与更可分离的显示相比，配置显示的表现最差。此外，反应模式表明，基维特图表的使用者会根据图表的形状从整合策略转变为顺序策略。这些实验证明了涌现视觉属性与认知之间的强大相互作用，并揭示了配置显示在整合任务中的优势的局限性。
