Some effects of row, diagonal, and column screen formats on search time and strategy

摘要

Effects on the speed of accurately locating a target character string within row, diagonal, and column information format categories, which also differed across two levels of packing, were investigated within a factorial experimental design. Subjects reported the presence or absence of the target, which was possibly located within a formatted display of 48 strings presented on a video display terminal (VDT) screen. Format categories impacted significantly on search times, and more rapid detection of a target was observed for tightly packed displays in comparison to loosely packed displays. Categories interacted with packing, and a metric of the format's information complexity was related to search times only within the context of the format's information local density. Regression and residual analyses showed that the tightly packed row display was best in terms of speed of information detection and of occasioning a similar orderly search strategy among the subjects.