Graphics have been used since ancient times to portray things that are inherently spatiovisual, like maps and building plans. More recently, graphics have been used to portray things that are metaphorically spatiovisual, like graphs and organizational charts. The assumption is that graphics can facilitate comprehension, learning, memory, communication and inference. Assumptions aside, research on static graphics has shown that only carefully designed and appropriate graphics prove to be beneficial for conveying complex systems. Effective graphics conform to the Congruence Principle according to which the content and format of the graphic should correspond to the content and format of the concepts to be conveyed. From this, it follows that animated graphics should be effective in portraying change over time. Yet the research on the efficacy of animated over static graphics is not encouraging. In cases where animated graphics seem superior to static ones, scrutiny reveals lack of equivalence between animated and static graphics in content or procedures; the animated graphics convey more information or involve interactivity. Animations of events may be ineffective because animations violate the second principle of good graphics, the Apprehension Principle, according to which graphics should be accurately perceived and appropriately conceived. Animations are often too complex or too fast to be accurately perceived. Moreover, many continuous events are conceived of as sequences of discrete steps. Judicious use of interactivity may overcome both these disadvantages. Animations may be more effective than comparable static graphics in situations other than conveying complex systems, for example, for real time reorientations in time and space.

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Human activity takes place in space. To act effectively, people need mental representations of space. People’s mental representations of space differ from space as conceived of by physicists, geometers, and cartographers. Mental representations of space are constructions based on elements, the things in space, and the spatial relations among them relative to a reference frame. People act in different spaces, depending on the task at hand. The spaces considered here are the space of the body, the space around the body, the space of navigation, and the space of graphics. Different elements and spatial relations are central for functioning in the different spaces, yielding different mental representations. Mental Spaces 3

Graphics, such as maps, have been used since ancient times to portray things that are inherently visual. More recently, graphics such as diagrams and graphs, have been used to portray things that are metaphorically spatio-visual. The assumption is that graphics facilitate comprehension, learning, memory, and inference. Assumptions aside, research on static graphics has shown that only carefully designed and appropriate graphics prove to be beneficial.

Software visualization is nifty stuff; but is it the powerful cognitive tool it is often assumed to be? This chapter attempts to moderate the understandable enthusiasm for software visualization and to raise some of the questions for which the discipline doesn't yet have answers. The chapter is structured as a list of questions with discussion. The questions are not a comprehensive analysis of cognitive challenges in software visualization. Rather, the chapter attempts to provide a list sufficiently provocative to give designers pause, in order: (a) to establish that good software visualization isn't simply a matter of mimicking paper-based tasks or doing what is technically easy---and certainly isn't `solved' yet; but also (b) even simple tools can improve software comprehension, if they're the right ones.

In this article, we describe and analyze the emergence of a scientific discipline, usability science,whichbridgesbasicresearchincognitionandperceptionandthedesignofusable technology.Ananalogybetweenusabilityscienceandmedicalscience(whichbridgesbasicbiologicalscienceandmedicalpractice)isdiscussed,withlessonsdrawnfromtheway in which medical practice translates practical problems into basic research and fosters technology transfer from research to technology. The similarities and differences of usability science to selected applied and basic research disciplines—human factors and human–computer interaction (HCI) is also described. The underlying philosophical differences between basic cognitive research and usability science are described as Wundtian structuralism versus Jamesian pragmatism. Finally, issues that usability science is likely to continue to address—presentation of information, user navigation, interaction, learning, and methods—are described with selective reviews of work in graph reading, controlled movement, and method development and validation. 1.

A century and a half ago, a young Ojibwa woman sent the letter in Figure 1 to someone she was interested in (Mallery, 1972). The letter portrays a schematic map with a message superimposed. The map is to her home, marked by her totem, and is addressed to the man she wishes to visit her, marked by his totem. The message is her arm beckoning him to her home. Graphics such as these appear dispersed across space and time. They not only serve as messages, but also as geographic, historical, and economic records, as poetry, stories, and myths, and as proclamations, announcements, and orders. Everywhere, graphics preceded written language. Even today, graphics are in common use as they are more readily understood by speakers of disparate languages than are written languages. This chapter presents an analysis of graphics produced by children and adults across time and across space. The primary interest is in the semantics of graphics, in particular, how they use space and the elements in it to communicate in cognitively natural ways. This is in contrast to words, which communicate primarily symbolically. The visuospatial nature of graphics, then, gives them both advantages and disadvantages relative to language. Graphics can use space and the elements in it to convey concrete

this paper reminds us that the most important outcome of education is wisdom. For Sternberg (1990), wisdom allows people to use their knowledge in sensible and productive ways. "Sensible" and "productive", I suggest, mean that a wise action is compatible with a person's environment and with their own intentions. Surely, then, our goal for multimedia in higher education should be to help students apply what they learn wisely, not to acquire what has been called "inert" knowledge (CTGV, 1990) or knowledge for its own sake. But we must also give attention to helping students acquire the knowledge from which wisdom develops. To date, it seems, this is where most of the time and effort in higher education has been spent. That knowledge, in turn, is built from information that is made available to students in a variety of ways including, now, multimedia formats. And that information is simply the result of organizing data about the world that occur in nature. There is a series of steps to the development of wisdom, moving through which requires a series of transformations that are accomplished by means of perceptual and cognitive processes. Data becomes information, information becomes knowledge and knowledge becomes wisdom. Learning experiences based on multimedia systems can contribute to the successful completion of all of these transformations. This means that the designer of multimedia materials has to understand the processes that occur within the student so that the appearance and actions of the multimedia presentation are compatible with them. In this section I propose that data become information by acquiring structure (or revealing their natural structure) through the actions of perceptual processes. Information becomes knowledge through learning processes and knowl...

Do people with different kinds of bodies think differently? According to the body-specificity hypothesis, people who interact with their physical environments in systematically different ways should form correspondingly different mental representations. In a test of this hypothesis, 5 experiments investigated links between handedness and the mental representation of abstract concepts with positive or negative valence (e.g., honesty, sadness, intelligence). Mappings from spatial location to emotional valence differed between rightand left-handed participants. Right-handers tended to associate rightward space with positive ideas and leftward space with negative ideas, but left-handers showed the opposite pattern, associating rightward space with negative ideas and leftward with positive ideas. These contrasting mental metaphors for valence cannot be attributed to linguistic experience, because idioms in English associate good with right but not with left. Rather, right- and left-handers implicitly associated positive valence more strongly with the side of space on which they could act more fluently with their dominant hands. These results support the body-specificity hypothesis and provide evidence for the perceptuomotor basis of even the most abstract ideas.

Abstract thought has roots in the spatial world. Abstractions are expressed in the ways things are arranged in the world as well as the ways people talk and gesture. Mappings to the page should be better when they are congruent, that is, when the abstract concept matches the spatial one. Congruent mappings can be revealed in people’s performance and preferences. Congruence is supported here for visual