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Designing bar graphs: orientation matters
Author(s) -
Fischer Martin H.,
Dewulf Nele,
Hill Robin L.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.1105
Subject(s) - bar chart , comprehension , mental representation , bar (unit) , psychology , graph , cognition , orientation (vector space) , representation (politics) , cognitive psychology , numerical cognition , computer science , combinatorics , mathematics , statistics , geometry , meteorology , physics , neuroscience , politics , political science , law , programming language
Abstract We investigated whether recent discoveries about the cognitive representation of numbers would predict performance in a graph comprehension task. Participants decided verbally whether statements of the form ‘A>B’ were correct descriptions of subsequently presented bar graphs. We observed longer decision times for horizontal compared to vertical bar graphs and for negative compared to positive number graphs. Comprehension was faster when the spatial layout of magnitude information matched an internal ‘mental number line’. These results show that the design of graphs can benefit from research into number representations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.