Stanley R. Parkinson

Computer display menus

Whereas menu selection remains as one of the most popular forms of computer-initiated dialogue, very little is known about the effects of menu structure on selection performance. Menu hierarchies can be arranged with many items on a menu and a minimum number of menus (breadth) or with few options on a menu and several levels (depth). In the present study, subjects searched through one of four verbal hierarchies developed by Miller (1981), each with 64 words at the lowest level. The deepest hierarchy consisted of binary choices at six levels (26) while in the broadest array (641) all target words were presented in a single menu. Intermediate levels of breadth and depth were eight choices at two levels (82) and four choices at three levels (43). Two arrays were used in the 641 condition, one in which categorical relationships between words were maintained by presenting all members of a category in the same area of the display (CAT64), and one in which location of words was randomly determined (RAN64). Trend...

Effects of help fields on navigating through hierarchical menu structures

Abstract The results of two experiments on simple menu selection are reported in which participants searched for target words through hierarchical menu displays consisting of binary choices at six levels. The menu hierarchy contained 64 words at the lowest level. Category descriptor terms were provided at higher levels and participants were required to select a sequence of options which would lead to the target word. In addition to the standard menu options, participants in experimental groups were shown help fields containing either previous selections, the target word, or upcoming selections. Participants who selected options in the presence of options at the next lower level in the menu (upcoming selections) searched with greater accuracy than participants in the control condition (no additional information), but neither continuous display of the target nor providing a list of previous selections within a trial benefited search performance. This pattern of results was found both when participants had no previous experience on the task and when help fields were introduced after 64 trials on the standard menu. Similar trends were found when help fields were introduced after 128 trials on the standard menu, but between-group differences failed to reach significance in that condition. The results of these experiments suggest that when required to use menus with multiple levels in simple menu selection, the options at a given level should include information about options at deeper levels in the menu.

Organization of broad computer menu displays

Sixty students performed simple menu selection with one of ten menus; each with 64 items arranged in four columns of 16 on a single frame. Target words consisted of eight items from each of eight categories. In eight categorized menus, words belonging to the same category were presented together in the display. Three factors were varied in the categorized menus: alphabetical vs categorial ordering of words within categories; spacing vs no additional spacing between category groups; and category organization arranged by column or by row. In the final two menus the entire array was arranged in alphabetical order, top-to-bottom by column in one, and left-to-right by row in the other. Both spacing and columnar organization facilitated search time. Menus with spacings between category groups were searched approximately 1 s faster than menus without additional spacing and menus with categories organized by column were searched about 1 s faster than menus organized by row. Furthermore, the effects of spacing and organization were additive. Given categorized menus, no difference in search time was observed for categorial vs alphabetical ordering within categories. Menus in which the entire array was arranged in alphabetical order were searched with rates similar to those for categorized menus with spacings and faster than categorized menus without spacings; these effects were observed with both forms of organization, row and column. Explanations were offered for the results and their implications for menu design were discussed.

Short-term forgetting: Comparisons between patients with dementia of the alzheimer type, depressed, and normal elderly

Abstract Group by retention interval interactions in previous studies of patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) and normal elderly have been interpreted as evidence for more rapid rates of forgetting by DAT patients (Corkin, 1982; Moms, 1986). Group by retention interval interactions, however, can reflect either differential registration or differential forgetting rates and ceiling effects in the performances of normal elderly in the previous studies preclude definitive interpretation. In the present study groups of patients with DAT, depressed, and normal elderly were tested in a Brown-Peterson task with zero and three interpolated distractor items. To tease apart the interpretations of registration and rate of forgetting, groups were equated for immediate recall differences by testing each individual in the Brown-Peterson task with to-be-remembered sequences equal to higher span of immediate memory. Memory spans were found to differ between all three groups (Normal > Depressed > DAT patients...

Effects of breadth, depth and number responses on computer menu search performance

Abstract Several menu configurations were designed to provide an independent assessment of the influence of breadth, depth and number of responses on computer menu search performance. The menu hierarchy consisted of a binary tree of category descriptor terms with 64 terminal options. Standard menus tested were 2 options on each of 6 sequential frames (2 6 ) and 4 options on 3 frames (4 3 ). Another menu (Upcoming Selections) was developed with 6 frames in which the binary choice on each frame was shown in the presence of options at the next menu level. Menus developed for separating the effects of number of frames and responses were configured with two menu levels per frame and responses were required to either one or both levels. Number of responses was the most important factor affecting execution time. The highest accuracy was found with the Upcoming Selections menu but that menu also resulted in the slowest execution time. A modified Upcoming Selections menu was developed which allowed participants to respond to each level or to bypass the higher level on each frame. Considering both speed and accuracy, that configuration yielded the best performance of all menus tested.

A dual task investigation of pilots' skill level

Performances of instructor pilots and student pilots were compared in a dual task paradigm combining a ground controlled approach (GCA) as the primary task and memory search as the subsidiary task. In the first experiment the difference in subsidiary task performance between single and dual conditions was greater for a group of students in the middle phase of T-37B training than for a group of experienced instructor pilots. Between-group differences on the search task were restricted to the y-intercept of the function relating reaction time to memory set size. It was concluded that the effect of experience on the type of flight task examined here is to reduce the processing demands of encoding and (or) responding. In the second experiment a group of student pilots who had just completed T-37B training was run in the same task to determine the sensitivity of the dual task to less disparate amounts of flying experience. The difference in memory search performance between single and dual conditions for the l...

Effects of semantic similarity, omission probability and number of alternatives in computer menu search

Abstract An experiment was conducted to assess the influence of semantic relatedness, omission probability and number of alternatives on search strategy and response accuracy in computer menu selection. Search strategies were defined as either self-terminating, exhaustive, or redundant and a direct measure of search type was provided in a condition employing sequential presentation of menu alternatives. A simultaneous condition was included to test the generality of results obtained with sequential presentation. Regression analyses indicated that semantic relatedness, omission probability and number of alternatives were all significant predictors of search strategy and response accuracy. Mode of presentation, sequential or simultaneous, was not significant in any of the analyses.

Adult age differences in short-term forgetting

Abstract Two experiments are reported in which young and old adults performed in a Brown-Peterson task. In the first experiment young adults recalled with greater accuracy than old adults and the difference between age groups was greater in delayed than in immediate recall. Performance varied inversely with interpolated task difficulty in the delayed recall condition, but this effect did not interact with age. In the second experiment an attempt was made to equate immediate recall performances of old and young adults to determine if age differences in the rate of forgetting are independent of age differences in registration. Each participant was pre-tested to determine the number of stimulus repetitions needed to achieve a minimum of 83% correct in immediate serial recall of 6-letter sequences. The number of repetitions an individual required in pre-testing was then used in a subsequent Brown-Peterson task. No significant age differences in delayed recall were obtained when immediate recall differences were minimized by differential repetition of to-be-remembered sequences. The results of these experiments suggest that age differences in forgetting rates arise from age-related differences in encoding and storage.

An interpretation of age-related differences in letter-matching performance

Comparisons were made of the response latencies of old (mean age = 69.2 years) and young (mean age = 26.8 years) subjects on simple and choice reaction time (RT) tasks and “physical identity” (PI) and “name identity” (NI) trials of a letter-matching task. Young subjects were faster than old subjects on all tasks, and the absolute difference between groups increased with processing complexity (simple RT < choice RT< PI <NI). However, in support of the hypothesis that aging is associated with a general reduction in processing speed, the relative difference between groups did not vary with task, except for a subset of the NI trials. Response latencies for the NI trials varied with stimulus letter for both age groups, but the magnitude of the letter effect was greater for the elderly. Their latencies were disproportionately long for the more difficult letters. A second experiment showed that NI latency reflected the visual similarity of the letters with respect to the other letters in the stimulus set. It is suggested, therefore, that the NI letter effect resulted from differences in letter identification time. The disproportionately long latencies of the elderly for the visually similar letters are discussed in terms of the hypothesis that aging is associated with an increase in internal noise.

Depression, elaboration, and mood congruence: differences between natural and induced mood

The results of two experiments examining the effects of depressed mood on recall of target words and recall of descriptor words are reported. Descriptors were either negatively valenced or neutral and were not related semantically to target adjectives. There was no overall difference in the recall of targets by naturally depressed and nondepressed subject?. There was a mood × descriptor interaction on target recall, and depressed subjects recalled more negative descriptors than did nondepressed subjects. In contrast, when a depressed mood was induced through a Velten Mood Induction Procedure, induced-depressed subjects recalled fewer target words than did nondepressed subjects, and there was no differential recall of descriptor words by induced-depressed and nondepressed subjects. The results of these experiments indicate clear differences in the recall patterns of naturally depressed and induced-depressed subjects in a single cognitive task. Copyright 1994 Psychonomic Society. Inc.