Effects of Task Probability on Integral and Separable Task Performance

Abstract

Relative to bar displays, object displays have repeatedly elicited superior performance for tasks involving information integration. This has been attributed to the emergent feature that is present in such displays; however, the attentional strategy used by the subjects may also playa role. Most previous research has had subjects perform the information integration task much more frequently than the separable tasks. Therefore, subjects may have learned to attend to the information integration task more, and thus they performed it better than they did the separable tasks. The present experiment manipulates the probability of the occurrence of the information integration and separable tasks. As the probability of the integral task increased, absolute error increased for the separable task but remained constant for the integral task. Also, reaction time dropped sharply for the integral task as the probability of the integral task increased, but it rose slowly for the separable task. Before using object displays, designers of visual displays should consider the attentional strategy of the operator.