Bartel Anna N, Lande Kevin J, Roos Joris, Schloss Karen B
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Cogn Sci. 2021 Jan;46(1):e13073. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13073.
When interpreting the meanings of visual features in information visualizations, observers have expectations about how visual features map onto concepts (inferred mappings.) In this study, we examined whether aspects of inferred mappings that have been previously identified for colormap data visualizations generalize to a different type of visualization, Venn diagrams. Venn diagrams offer an interesting test case because empirical evidence about the nature of inferred mappings for colormaps suggests that established conventions for Venn diagrams are counterintuitive. Venn diagrams represent classes using overlapping circles and express logical relationships between those classes by shading out regions to encode the concept of non-existence, or none. We propose that people do not simply expect shading to signify non-existence, but rather they expect regions that appear as holes to signify non-existence (the hole hypothesis.) The appearance of a hole depends on perceptual properties in the diagram in relation to its background. Across three experiments, results supported the hole hypothesis, underscoring the importance of configural processing for interpreting the meanings of visual features in information visualizations.
在解读信息可视化中的视觉特征含义时，观察者对于视觉特征如何映射到概念上（即推断映射）有着预期。在本研究中，我们考察了先前针对颜色映射数据可视化所确定的推断映射方面，是否能推广到另一种类型的可视化——维恩图上。维恩图提供了一个有趣的测试案例，因为关于颜色映射推断映射性质的实证证据表明，维恩图的既定惯例是违反直觉的。维恩图使用重叠的圆圈来表示类别，并通过将区域涂黑以编码不存在或为空的概念，从而表达这些类别之间的逻辑关系。我们提出，人们并非简单地期望涂黑表示不存在，而是期望看起来像空洞的区域表示不存在（空洞假设）。空洞的出现取决于图表中与其背景相关的感知属性。在三个实验中，结果支持了空洞假设，强调了构型处理在解读信息可视化中视觉特征含义方面的重要性。
