Attending to and Maintaining Hierarchical Objects in Graphics Comprehension

Information graphics convey different levels of information, depending on how their elements are grouped into different units of objects. How people set boundaries to graphical objects to be interpreted and how they maintain the object boundaries during the given task are two important problems in understanding the way people comprehend information graphics. Table comprehension process was experimentally investigated in terms of eye gaze control behaviors when people were required to read off information distributed over large-scale objects, e.g., a row or a column, of an alphanumerical table. Our data suggest that attention can spread over large-scale objects and that some eye-movements occur to maintain the attended objects. We provide an explication of these observations applying recent findings about object-based attention and visual indexing.

[1]  Raj M. Ratwani,et al.  Thinking Graphically: Extracting Local and Global Information , 2003 .

[2]  Paul R. Kinnear,et al.  Skill in Map Reading and Memory for Maps , 1988 .

[3]  Richard K. Lowe.  Search Strategies and Inference in the Exploration of Scientific Diagrams , 1989 .

[4]  Daniel C. Richardson,et al.  Thinking outside the brain: Spatial indices to visual and linguistic Information. , 2004 .

[5]  Joseph Krummenacher,et al.  Attention and Visual Object Segmentation , 2004 .

[6]  J. O'Regan,et al.  Solving the "real" mysteries of visual perception: the world as an outside memory. , 1992, Canadian journal of psychology.

[7]  W. Hays.  Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams Networks Maps. , 1985 .

[8]  Stephen M. Kosslyn,et al.  Elements of graph design , 1993 .

[9]  Susan Bell Trickett,et al.  Toward a Comprehensive Model of Graph Comprehension: Making the Case for Spatial Cognition , 2006, Diagrams.

[10]  Paul R. Kinnear,et al.  Memory for topographic contour maps , 1987 .

[11]  Richard Lowe,et al.  Diagram prediction and higher order structures in mental representation , 1994 .

[12]  Z. Pylyshyn.  The role of location indexes in spatial perception: A sketch of the FINST spatial-index model , 1989, Cognition.

[13]  A. Kramer,et al.  Perceptual organization and focused attention: The role of objects and proximity in visual processing , 1991, Perception & psychophysics.

[14]  K. Holyoak,et al.  Mapping conceptual to spatial relations in visual reasoning. , 1996, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[15]  Catharine Abell,et al.  Seeing and Visualizing: It's Not What You Think , 2005 .

[16]  Daniel C. Richardson,et al.  Representation, space and Hollywood Squares: looking at things that aren't there anymore , 2000, Cognition.

[17]  Yasuhiro Katagiri,et al.  An Eye-Tracking Study of Exploitations of Spatial Constraints in Diagrammatic Reasoning , 2008, Diagrams.

[18]  Howard Wainer,et al.  Understanding Graphs and Tables , 1992 .

[19]  Atsushi Shimojima,et al.  Hypothetical Drawing in Embodied Spatial Reasoning , 2008 .

[20]  J. Duncan.  Selective attention and the organization of visual information. , 1984, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[21]  Priti Shah,et al.  A Model of the Perceptual and Conceptual Processes in Graph Comprehension , 1998 .

[22]  Sir G. Archaeopteryx.  Object-based attention in the primary visual cortex of the macaque monkey , 1998 .

[23]  Victor A. F. Lamme,et al.  Separate processing dynamics for texture elements, boundaries and surfaces in primary visual cortex of the macaque monkey. , 1999, Cerebral cortex.

[24]  Atsushi Shimojima,et al.  Derivative meaning in graphical representations , 1999, Proceedings 1999 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages.

[25]  A. Halpern.  Musical expertise and melodic structure in memory for musical notation. , 1982 .

[26]  Nancy Kanwisher,et al.  fMRI evidence for objects as the units of attentional selection , 1999, Nature.

[27]  Steven Pinker,et al.  A theory of graph comprehension. , 1990 .

[28]  Rajesh P. N. Rao,et al.  Embodiment is the foundation, not a level , 1996, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[29]  Patrick Olivier,et al.  Diagrammatic Reasoning: An Artificial Intelligence Perspective , 2001, Artificial Intelligence Review.

[30]  John T. Guthrie,et al.  Searching documents: Cognitive processes and deficits in understanding graphs, tables, and illustrations. , 1993 .

[31]  Gerald L. Lohse,et al.  A Cognitive Model for Understanding Graphical Perception , 1993, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[32]  Victor A. F. Lamme,et al.  The implementation of visual routines , 2000, Vision Research.

[33]  Jacques Bertin,et al.  Graphics and graphic information-processing , 1981 .

[34]  Priti Shah,et al.  Toward a Model of Knowledge-Based Graph Comprehension , 2002, Diagrams.

[35]  S. Ullman.  Visual routines , 1984, Cognition.

[36]  Roelfsema Pieter.  Cortical algorithms for perceptual grouping , 2008 .