Psychological Evidence of Mental Segmentation in Table Reading

摘要

How we organize elements when reading a table was examined in a psychological experiment using a modified spatial-cuing paradigm. Table-like stimuli consisting of 16 square elements arranged in a four-by-four matrix form were used. Participants were instructed to discriminate whether the presented stimuli could be read as containing either one element or two elements in accordance with the induced reading direction. The results showed that when two elements were presented along with the induced direction, it was easier to read as such than when two elements were presented orthogonal to the induced direction. Although there was no contour line in the stimuli, participants were able to mentally segment and organize them into global units lying in the particular direction, which was instrumental to reading the tables efficiently.