Exploring the effects of icon characteristics on user performance: the role of icon concreteness, complexity, and distinctiveness

Because icons, signs, and symbols are now widely used to communicate information, it is essential for system designers to know what makes them easy to use and interpret. The authors report a series of studies that examine characteristics considered central to icon usability. After quantifying the properties of icon concreteness, complexity, and discriminability, the authors assessed each property's effects on user performance when user experience, task demands, and presentation context were systematically varied. Findings indicated that the effects of icon concreteness were primarily associated with the initial grasp of meaning, whereas complexity effects were found to persist longer and to be associated with search efficacy. The effects of icon distinctiveness were complex, but distinctiveness was enhanced by using both semantic and visual contrasts. The implications of these findings for interface design are discussed.     

Chronic amphetamine exposure during the preweanling period does not affect avoidance learning or novelty-seeking of adult rats

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether exposure to amphetamine during the preweanling period would impact the learning or reward processes of rats tested in adulthood. In three experiments we examined whether amphetamine treatment (0-10 mg/kg per day) on postnatal days 11-17 altered the subsequent performance of adult Sprague-Dawley rats on a step-down passive avoidance, active avoidance, or novelty-seeking task. There was no evidence that postnatal amphetamine exposure affected performance on any of these tasks. These results suggest that the long-term impact of pre- and postnatal psychostimulant exposure differs, because in utero stimulant treatment is known to produce learning deficits and decrease reinforcement efficacy of rats tested in adulthood.     

Espbase: A microsoft access tool for selecting symbol and icon sets for usability

The ESPbase provides a tool for storing symbols and icons along with information about their characteristics. Information about a wide range of symbol characteristics is included on the database to facilitate the selection of symbol sets for research and design. The database includes information about the graphical characteristics and functions of symbols. It also includes ratings of symbol concreteness, complexity, familiarity, and meaningfulness. Symbols and icons can be accessed on the basis of each of these characteristics or any combination of characteristics. This makes it easier to select symbols on the basis of usability and design requirements. It also means that symbols can be easily selected for research while controlling their characteristics on a number of dimensions.     

THE FATHER,THE FATHER FUNCTION,THE FATHER PRINCIPLE: SOME CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYTIC DEVELOPMENTS

The author discusses Freud's thinking on the role of the father, as well as that of later French theoreticians. To illustrate his remarks, he draws on the poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1912–1987), a Brazilian poet whose work often dealt with themes of the father, the family, and his own paternal relationship. The author also discusses the psychic formation of the father principle and how this may be evident in the clinical analytic setting, even when the analyst's approach privileges field theory, intersubjectivity, or other concepts emphasizing the relationship between analyst and patient.     

Searching for signs, symbols, and icons: effects of time of day, visual complexity, and grouping

Searching for icons, symbols, or signs is an integral part of tasks involving computer or radar displays, head-up displays in aircraft, or attending to road traffic signs. Icons therefore need to be designed to optimize search times, taking into account the factors likely to slow down visual search. Three factors likely to adversely affect visual search were examined: the time of day at which search was carried out, the visual complexity of the icons, and the extent to which information features in the icon were grouped together. The speed with which participants searched icon arrays for a target was slower early in the afternoon, when icons were visually complex and when information features in icons were not grouped together to form a single object. Theories of attention that account for both feature-based and object-based search best explain these findings and are used to form the basis for ways of improving icon design.     

A bird in hand: discouraging gambling on a slot machine simulation

Using a slot machine simulation, our laboratory has found that participants, given the opportunity not to gamble and to keep the money they have been staked, almost always choose to play the simulation. In this study, the authors investigated whether increasing the salience of the money for which participants played or increasing the response effort required to gamble the money would decrease gambling. In Experiment 1, participants in different groups were told about, were shown, or held the dollars 10 they were to be staked to play the simulation. Results showed that participants who held the money prior to gambling played fewer trials and bet less money than participants in other groups. In Experiment 2, participants in different groups were staked with dollars 5 in nickels, quarters, or their choice of nickels or quarters. Results showed that the participants staked with nickels ultimately gambled a similar amount of money as did participants staked with quarters. They did so by playing the simulation more times than the other participants. Participants staked with nickels did, however, end the session with the most money. Findings suggest ways that gambling and gambling losses can be lessened.     

Book reviews

Weiskrantz, L. (1986). Blindsight: A case study and implications. Oxford University Press. Pp. 187. ISBN 0-19-852129-4. £19.50.

Humphreys, G. W. & Riddoch, M. J. (1987). to see but not to see: A case study of visual agnosia. Hove and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd. Pp. 124. ISBN 0-83677-064-9. £12.95.

Downing, J. A. (1988). Advances in psychology: Cognitive psychology and reading in the USSR. Amsterdam: North Holland; Elsevier Science Publishers. Pp. 471. ISBN 0-444-70374-8. $108.00.

John Beech & Ann Colley (Eds.) (1987). Cognitive approaches to reading. Chichester: John Wiley. Pp. xii + 315.

James Wertsch (Ed.) (1985). Culture, communication and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 379. ISBN 0-521-25214-8. £27.50 (Hardback).

Fodor, J. A. (1987). Psychosemantics: The problem of meaning in the philosophy of mind. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press. Pp. xiii, 1-171. ISBN 0-262-06106-6.

Richardson, K. (1988). Understanding Psychology. Milton Keynes: The Open University Press. Pp. 114. ISBN 0-335-09842-8. Paperback £7.95.

Stanovich, Keith E. (Ed.) (1988). Children's reading and the development of phonological awareness. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Pp. 177. ISBN 0-8143-1909-2. $20.00.

Allport, A., MacKay, D.G., Prinz, W., & Scheerer, E. (Eds.), (1987). Language perception and production: Relationships between listening, speaking, reading, and writing. London: Academic Press. Pp. xiii + 497. ISBN 0-12-052750-2. £32.00

Light, L. L. & Burke, D. M. (eds.) (1988). Language, Memory and Aging. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 280. ISBN-0-521-32942-6. £27.50

Friedman, S.L., Scholnick, E.F., and Cocking, R. R. (1987). Bleuprints for thinking: The role of planing in cognitive development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. xv + 559. ISBN 0-521-25605-4. £40.00.