Graphs as aids to knowledge construction: Signaling techniques for guiding the process of graph comprehension.

@article{Shah1999GraphsAA,
  title={Graphs as aids to knowledge construction: Signaling techniques for guiding the process of graph comprehension.},
  author={Priti Shah and Richard E. Mayer and Mary Hegarty},
  journal={Journal of Educational Psychology},
  year={1999},
  volume={91},
  pages={690-702}
}
Graphical displays are frequently used to express quantitative information in texts, but viewers are sometimes unable to comprehend and learn the relevant information. According to a cognitive analysis, graph interpretation involves (a) relatively simple pattern perception and association processes in which viewers can associate graphic patterns to quantitative referents and (b) more complex and error-prone inferential processes in which viewers must mentally transform data. Experiment 1… 

Figures from this paper

Graph Comprehension: The Role of Format, Content and Individual Differences

  • P. Shah
  • Psychology
    Diagrammatic Representation and Reasoning
  • 2002
Research has found that graph comprehension is a complex, interactive process akin to text comprehension, and individual differences in graph comprehension skill and domain knowledge interact with the bottom-up influences such that highly skilled graph viewers are less influenced by both thebottom-up and top-down visual characteristics.

Cognitive Aids for Guiding Graph Comprehension.

This study sought to improve students' comprehension of scientific graphs by adapting scaffolding techniques used to aid text comprehension. In 3 experiments involving 121 female and 88 male college

Review of Graph Comprehension Research: Implications for Instruction

Graphs are commonly used in textbooks and educational software, and can help students understand science and social science data. However, students sometimes have difficulty comprehending information

Thinking graphically: Connecting vision and cognition during graph comprehension.

A new framework for information integration is proposed that highlights visual integration and cognitive integration and design principles to improve both visual and Cognitive integration are described.

Bar and Line Graph Comprehension: An Interaction of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processes

Viewers were most likely to generate inferences only when they had high graphicacy skills, the data were familiar and thus the information inferred was expected, and the format supported those inferences.

Eye Movements Indicate the Temporal Organisation of Information Processing in Graph Comprehension

Summary Hierarchical graphs (e.g. file system browsers and preference trees) represent objects (e.g. files and folders) as graph nodes and relations between them (e.g. sub-folder relations) as

Eye movements reveal distinct search and reasoning processes in comprehension of complex graphs

Hierarchical graphs (e.g. file system browsers, family trees) represent objects (e.g. files, folders) as graph nodes, and relations (subfolder relations) between them as lines. In three experiments,

Toward a Model of Knowledge-Based Graph Comprehension

According to this model, knowledge-based graph comprehension involves an interaction of top-down and bottom up processes and several types of knowledge are brought to bear on graphs: domain knowledge, graphical skills, and explanatory skills.

Aspects of performance on line graph description tasks: influenced by graph familiarity and different task features

Motivated by cognitive theories of graph comprehension, this study systematically manipulated characteristics of a line graph description task in a speaking test in ways to mitigate the influence of

Expert interpretation of bar and line graphs: the role of graphicacy in reducing the effect of graph format

The study sought to determine whether expert interpretation is affected by graph format in the same way that novice interpretations are, and revealed that, unlike novices—and contrary to the assumptions of several graph comprehension models—experts' performance was the same for both graph formats.
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 48 REFERENCES

A Model of the Perceptual and Conceptual Processes in Graph Comprehension

A model of the comprehension of line graphs that emphasizes the close interaction between conceptual processes, such as interpreting labels and scales, and perceptual processes,such as encoding and interpreting the slopes and patterns of the lines themselves is proposed.

Searching documents: Cognitive processes and deficits in understanding graphs, tables, and illustrations.

Abstract A cognitive processing framework for how people read and understand graphs, tables, and illustrations was explored in two studies. In Study I, 16 students provided verbal protocol data in

An Information-Processing Analysis of Graph Perception

Abstract Recent work on graph perception has focused on the nature of the processes that operate when people decode the information represented in graphs. We began our investigations by gathering

Stimulus complexity and information integration in the spontaneous interpretations of line graphs

Viewers of a graph will readily interpret its contents, even when given no explicit instructions regarding what information to extract. However, little is known about the strategies that subjects

Elements of graph design

Elements of Graph Design explains step-by-step how to create effective displays of quantitative data, with guidelines based on the authors' current understanding of how the brain processes information.

A Cognitive Model for Understanding Graphical Perception

  • G. Lohse
  • Psychology
    Hum. Comput. Interact.
  • 1993
A computer program that simulates graphical perception and predicts response time to answer a question posed to a graphic display from assumptions about the sequence of eye fixations, short-term memory capacity and duration limits, and the degree of difficulty to acquire information in each glance is described.

Cognitive Efficiency Considerations for Good Graphic Design

Detailed data analyses suggest that differences arise through substitution of visual operators for logical ones and through the use of visual cues that help reduce search.

Bars and lines: A study of graphic communication

These predictions predict that people should more readily associate bars with discrete comparisons between data points because bars are discrete entities and facilitate point estimates.

Functions, Graphs, and Graphing: Tasks, Learning, and Teaching

This review of the introductory instructional substance of functions and graphs analyzes research on the interpretation and construction tasks associated with functions and some of their