Peripheral Vision and Peripheral Displays

Abstract

Technological advances have signi-ficantly altered the nature of the man-machine inter-face. Notable changes include: 1) a redefinition of the role of the human from that of a manual operator to a monitor/manager of complex systems; and 2) the availability of large amounts of data, presented or updated at rapid rates. As a result of such changes, the human operator must monitor, integrate, evaluate, and utilize continually changing information from a large number of spatially separated displays. Such demands require complex scanning patterns among numerous displays, and maintaining large amounts of information in working memory. These requirements and demands often overload the human's limited processing capabilities, and lead to degraded performance and increased probability of error. One possible solution to this propagation of displays and consequent information overload is to make more efficient use of human visual capabilities by offloading some types of information from foveal vision to peripheral vision. If appropriate types of information are presented to each aspect of vision (foveal and peripheral), then the human operator's bandwidth of information intake may be usefully increased. However, significant issues must be addressed before attempts are made to design peripheral displays. Such issues may be grouped into three categories: 1) determine the characteristics of peripheral vision relevant to display design (e.g., luminance sensitivity, contrast sensitivity, and acuity); 2) determine the characteristics of peripheral information processing (e.g., the costs and benefits of covert orienting of attention, the effects of foveal load on peripheral processing and vice-versa, and events in peripheral vision that cause a saccade); and 3) determine what types of information structure provide useful information in peripheral vision, which would indicate what types of information should be displayed in peripheral vision. The answers to these issues will provide data that may help determine whether it is feasible to display useable information to both foveal and peripheral vision, and provide guidelines for the design of peripheral displays. The purpose of this symposium is to address theoretical and applied issues of peripheral vision. The description and evaluation of the properties and characteristics of peripheral vision will serve as fundamental knowledge in determining the feasibility and design of peripheral displays. The symposium will be empirical in nature, with the participants presenting experimental data relevant to the above issues.