NAIVE JUDGMENTS OF STIMULUS-RESPONSE COMPATIBILITY

Subjects were asked to rate the usability of interface designs that va ried in compatibility of stimulus-response mappings. In Study 1 subjec ts rated light-button layouts. In Study 2, the same subjects rated sto ve burner control designs. In Study 3, different subjects ranked fragm ents of computer command languages. In all three judgment tasks, subje cts showed limited sensitivity to stimulus-response compatibility. A t heory of naive stimulus-response judgments is put forward to explain t he patterns of judgments in the three tasks. According to this theory, naive judges use an item-summing heuristic: Where possible, designs a re compared by summing the presumed goodness of individual stimulus-re sponse mappings. The upshot of this heuristic is that the usability be nefits of configural, rule-based mappings are systematically undervalu ed.