DOES DISPLAY CONFIGURATION AFFECT INFORMATION SAMPLING PERFORMANCE

This investigation sought to determine the influence of a visual displ ay's spatial configuration on participant's ability to sample linguist ic information. Line drawings circumscribed 36 areas shaped like squar es, rectangles,'T','L' and '+', among others. Each such 'shape' was pr esented for 1000 ms, followed by a 12-letter matrix presented for 50 m s. Participants then reported the letters that would have been inside the boundary contour if it were superimposed on the letter matrix. The results indicated that single, spatially contiguous areas could be mo nitored better than separate areas; the recall of simple configuration s seemed better than that of more complex ones, while outlying positio ns tended to be ignored. The data were thus viewed as compatible with recent theories of perceptual organization in displays, such as the no tion of 'common region' and the proximity compatibility principle. Inf ormational complexity (IC) proved somewhat better than figural compact ness (FC) in accounting for the data in terms of information theory. T he findings may help to specify the optimal spatial configurations for visually displayed linguistic information in a variety of contexts, i ncluding head-up displays (HUDs).