'Cognitive Efficiency' in Display Media: A First Investigation of Basic Signal Dimensions

摘要

In many work domains, such as aviation cockpits and hospital operation rooms, data overload can resultwhen a human operator is unable to make efficient use of his/her limited cognitive resources in processingtask-relevant data. One way to address this problem is to design displays that communicate data in amentally economical way, either by increasing the information content, or decreasing the demand oncognitive resources. This paper introduces a metric-"Cognitive Efficiency" (CE)-expressed as a ratio ofdisplay informativeness to resource demand, which can be used to compare the effectiveness of variousdisplay types for a given task environment. The present study explored CE ratios for basic visual andauditory displays modulated by either the intensity or spectral properties (e.g., hue, pitch) of the light/soundsignal. Among other findings, the results showed that visual displays are more efficient than auditorydisplays when more information content is present, and spectral modulation is more efficient than intensitymodulation. Interesting differences are highlighted between CE ratios that use subjective (NASA-TLX) andthose that use physiological (EEG) workload measures. The findings have implications for the study ofhuman information processing, display design, and the development of metrics for display effectiveness.