TY - CONF
T1 - Bars and Lines
T2 - 1997 AAAI Fall Symposium
AU - Zacks, Jeff
AU - Tversky, Barbara
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Interval Research Corporationf or its support of this research and the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship Program for its support of the first author. Thanksa lso to DuncanH ill, Rehan Khan, and Shelly Wynecoopf or their assistance rating the responses and Terry Winogradf or his valuable commentosn an earlier draft.
Publisher Copyright:
© 1997, AAAI (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.
PY - 1997
Y1 - 1997
N2 - Interpretations of graphic displays of information seemto be rootedin principles of cognitivenaturalness and information processing rather than arbitrary correspondences. Both of these considerations predict that people should morereadily associate bars with discrete information because bars are discrete entities andfacilitate point estimates.Similarly, people should morereadily associate lines with trends becauselines connect discreteentities anddirectly represent slope. In two experiments, viewerstended to describe bar graphsin terms of discrete comparisons betweenindividual data points, while they tendedto describeline graphsin terms of continuous trends. In a third experiment, participants sketched graphicdisplays to illustrate verbal descriptions of data; they tendedto usebar graphsto convey discrete comparisons, andline graphsto conveytrends. The strength of the bar/line conventionseems to dependon the communicativesituation as well as the perceptual and conceptual properties of the graphicdisplays.
AB - Interpretations of graphic displays of information seemto be rootedin principles of cognitivenaturalness and information processing rather than arbitrary correspondences. Both of these considerations predict that people should morereadily associate bars with discrete information because bars are discrete entities andfacilitate point estimates.Similarly, people should morereadily associate lines with trends becauselines connect discreteentities anddirectly represent slope. In two experiments, viewerstended to describe bar graphsin terms of discrete comparisons betweenindividual data points, while they tendedto describeline graphsin terms of continuous trends. In a third experiment, participants sketched graphicdisplays to illustrate verbal descriptions of data; they tendedto usebar graphsto convey discrete comparisons, andline graphsto conveytrends. The strength of the bar/line conventionseems to dependon the communicativesituation as well as the perceptual and conceptual properties of the graphicdisplays.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85169577830
M3 - Paper
AN - SCOPUS:85169577830
SP - 144
EP - 150
Y2 - 8 November 1997 through 10 November 1997
ER -