A Redundant Use of Luminance and Flashing with Shape and Color as Highlighting Codes ,in Symbolic Displays

Three visual search experiments evaluated the benefits and distracting effects of using luminance and flashing to highlight subclasses of symbols coded by shape and color. Each of three general shape/color classes (circular/blue, diamond/red, square/yellow) was divided into three subclasses by presenting the upper half, lower half, or entire symbol. Increasing the luminance of a subclass by a factor of two did not result in a significant improvement in search performance. Flashing a subclass at a rate of 3 Hz resulted in a significantly shorter mean search time (48% improvement). Increasing the luminance of one subclass (by a factor of five) while simultaneously flashing another significantly improved search times by 31% and 43% respectively, compared with nonhighlighted search conditions. In each experiment, the search times for nonhighlighted target subclasses were not affected by the presence of brighter and flashing targets. The failure of the initial experiment to find a significant performance improvement caused by increasing symbol luminance suggested that a larger luminance increase was necessary for this code to be effective. The overall results suggest that using luminance and flashing to highlight subclasses of color-and shape-coded symbols can reduce search times for these subclasses without producing a distraction effect by way of a concomitant increase in the search times for unhighlighted symbols.

[1]  C W ERIKSEN,et al.  Location of objects in a visual display as a function of the number of dimensions on which the objects differ. , 1952, Journal of experimental psychology.

[2]  C W ERIKSEN,et al.  Object location in a complex perceptual field. , 1953, Journal of experimental psychology.

[3]  S J GERATHEWOHL,et al.  Conspicuity of flashing light signals of different frequency and duration. , 1954, Journal of experimental psychology.

[4]  K. M. Newman,et al.  Multidimensional Nonredundant Encoding of a Visual Symbolic Display. , 1961 .

[5]  A. Crawford,et al.  THE PERCEPTION OF LIGHT SIGNALS : THE EFFECT OF MIXING FLASHING AND STEADY IRRELEVANT LIGHTS , 1963 .

[6]  D A Goldstein,et al.  Visual Coding Using Flashing Lights1 , 1967, Human factors.

[7]  Nancy C. Goodwin,et al.  Another Look at Blinking Displays , 1972 .

[8]  Howard J. Heglin NAVSHIPS Display Illumination Design Guide. Section 2: Human Factors , 1973 .

[9]  R. E. Christ Review and Analysis of Color Coding Research for Visual Displays , 1975 .

[10]  K Gummerman,et al.  Successive Processing of Color and Form from Brief Visual Displays , 1975, Perceptual and motor skills.

[11]  A. Treisman,et al.  A feature-integration theory of attention , 1980, Cognitive Psychology.

[12]  R. Carter Visual search with color. , 1982, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[13]  Ken Nakayama,et al.  Serial and parallel processing of visual feature conjunctions , 1986, Nature.

[14]  Anne Treisman,et al.  Features and objects in visual processing , 1986 .

[15]  Jon Driver,et al.  Visual search for a conjunction of movement and form is parallel , 1988, Nature.

[16]  Rebecca M Jubis,et al.  The Effectiveness of Redundant Color-Coding on Search and Identification in a Process-Control Task, , 1988 .

[17]  S. Yantis,et al.  Uniqueness of abrupt visual onset in capturing attention , 1988, Perception & psychophysics.

[18]  J. Duncan,et al.  Visual search and stimulus similarity. , 1989, Psychological review.

[19]  Susan L. Franzel,et al.  Guided search: an alternative to the feature integration model for visual search. , 1989, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[20]  Rebecca M. T. Jubis Coding Effects on Performance in a Process Control Task with Uniparameter and Multiparameter Displays , 1990 .

[21]  S. Yantis,et al.  Mechanisms of attentional priority. , 1990, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[22]  J. diVita,et al.  Preliminary Investigation On The Utility Of Saturation And Brightness As Redundant And Non-Redundant Codes With Hue In Tactical Displays. , 1990 .

[23]  A. Treisman Search, similarity, and integration of features between and within dimensions. , 1991, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[24]  R.M.T. Jubis,et al.  Coding Effects on Performance in a Process Control Task with Uniparameter and Multiparameter Displays , 1990 .

[25]  R I Thackray,et al.  Effects of monitoring under high and low taskload on detection of flashing and coloured radar targets. , 1991, Ergonomics.