Searching through letter arrays.

Subjects searched rectangular arrays of letters for the presence or absence of a pre-designated target letter. The number of letters in a display varied from 2 to 25. Under these conditions search times wore proportional to the number of letters displayed. Three-fold variation in the overall size of the displays produced only slight changes in speed of search. Examination of position effects revealed a tendency for upper portions of displays to be scanned first. No clear left-right tendencies emerged. Search times were converted to estimates of symbol processing rates. This analysis suggested that the optimum number of symbols to present in a display of the type used is about nine symbols.

[1]  Charles A. Baker,et al.  Tarǵet Size and Visual Recoǵnition1 , 1960 .

[2]  U NEISSER,et al.  Searching for Ten Targets Simultaneously , 1963, Perceptual and motor skills.

[3]  Still Aw.  Use of orthogonal polynomials with nonparametric tests. , 1967 .

[4]  W K Estes,et al.  A DETECTION METHOD AND PROBABILISTIC MODELS FOR ASSESSING INFORMATION PROCESSING FROM BRIEF VISUAL DISPLAYS , 1964 .

[5]  H. F. Crovitz,et al.  VISUAL FIELD AND THE LETTER SPAN. , 1965, Journal of experimental psychology.

[6]  W. Estes,et al.  Visual detection in relation to display size and redundancy of critical elements I , 1966 .

[7]  U. Neisser.  Decision-time without reaction-time: Experiments in visual scanning. , 1963 .

[8]  Charles W. Eriksen,et al.  The perception of multiple simultaneously presented forms as a function of foveal spacing , 1967 .

[9]  U. Neisser,et al.  SEARCHING THROUGH WORD LISTS , 1965 .

[10]  S. Smith,et al.  Color coding and visual search. , 1962, Journal of experimental psychology.

[11]  C W Eriksen,et al.  Independence of successive inputs and uncorrelated error in visual form perception. , 1966, Journal of experimental psychology.

[12]  C. Eriksen,et al.  Independence in the perception of simultaneously presented forms at brief durations. , 1967, Journal of experimental psychology.

[13]  J M ENOCH,et al.  Effect of the size of a complex display upon visual search. , 1959, Journal of the Optical Society of America.

[14]  L. G. Williams,et al.  A STUDY OF VISUAL SEARCH USING EYE MOVEMENT RECORDINGS: VALIDATION STUDIES. , 1966 .