An experiment was designed to assess and compare the effects of symbolic, numeric, and colour coding in formatted displays. 12 S's viewed displays in which 2-digit entries were arranged in tabular matrix format. Displays differed in density, structure, and auxiliary coding. SOS performed ors-comparison and item-counting tasks, providing time and error measures. Auxiliary colour coding resulted in better performance than superscript or underline codes for both tasks. Colour coding was relatively more effective for item counting than furrow comparison where the display format was related to the task. The value of a display code appears to be dependent upon the joint interaction of the format in which it is displayed and the taks to which it is applied.
Samenvatting