SAMPLING BEHAVIOR IN A 4 INSTRUMENT MONITORING TASK - EFFECTS OF SIGNAL BANDWIDTH AND NUMBER OF EVENTS PER SIGNAL

This study investigates the effect of global signal characteristics, s uch as bandwidth and number of events on human sampling behavior. It a lso examines whether the influence of these characteristics on samplin g strategy is affected by local (actually observed) signal features, s uch as the degree with which a sampled signal value falls short of an event region and the rate of change. In the present study four indepen dent, numerically displayed signals were used; two different bandwidth s and two different event numbers were chosen. To take a sample, subje cts had to use a mouse. The mouse key responses were used as an index of sampling. The study demonstrates that both bandwidth and number of events equally affected the distribution of samples over signals. In a ddition, it shows that global signal characteristics determine samplin g behavior less prominently when the attentional demands brought about by the local signal features become of greater importance. This indic ates that not predictability as governed by global signal characterist ics as such, but rather predictability given certain local signal feat ures is a crucial factor in determining sampling behavior.