Conceptualizing in Assembly Tasks

A method is presented to determine a person's hypothetical conceptualization of an object—its breakdown into subassemblies, sub-subassemblies, and so on—from the person's sequence of requests for pieces used in constructing it. Also, a technique is provided to determine whether, given a group of conceptualizations, there is a typical one. Results of the experiments showed that assembly instructions presenting a typical conceptualization yielded better structural and functional performance than did instructions presenting a minority conceptualization. Conceptualizations were derived from objects built from memory (and incorrectly) by people who first studied typical or minority instructions. A new distance measure was used to determine how far these conceptualizations were from those presented in the instructions. Typical instructions yielded typical conceptualizations; importantly, minority instructions also yielded typical conceptualizations, although they were significantly less typical than those from typical instructions. The results are discussed in terms of both their theoretical and methodological significance and their practical significance in the design of procedural instructions.

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