Thinking about the weather: How display salience and knowledge affect performance in a graphic inference task.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Information Visualization

Background:

• Visual displays, such as weather maps, are complex and require effective information processing.
• Understanding the interplay between display design (bottom-up) and user knowledge (top-down) is crucial for optimizing performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the interaction between bottom-up display design and top-down domain knowledge in complex visual displays.
• To determine how visual salience and meteorological knowledge influence performance and eye fixations on weather maps.

Main Methods:

• Three experiments were conducted manipulating the visual salience of information on weather maps.
• Participant performance and eye fixations were measured before and after learning meteorological principles.

Main Results:

• Display design (salience) impacted performance only after participants acquired domain knowledge.
• Participants performed better with salient displays post-learning, but eye fixations were primarily driven by top-down knowledge.
• Display design effects on performance and eye fixations were partially dissociated.

Conclusions:

• Eye fixations are predominantly guided by top-down factors like task and domain knowledge.
• Effective display design aids performance by guiding attention and facilitating the processing of relevant visual features, especially after knowledge acquisition.