Conceptualizing Visual Detail: Message Structure as a Predictor of Preferential Processing

摘要

The research reported here integrates traditions of cognitive information processing and visual communication research by offering a new conceptual definition of item centrality and a methodological tool for measuring it. Using developments in information processing research about effects of visual production features on attention and memory, this article advances the proposition that these features influence the perception of some objects as central or peripheral to the information presented in a specific visual scene. These structural features were combined here to develop and test a structural indicator of item centrality. The results show that such elements as size, proximity to other objects, brightness, motion, contrast, and position on screen account for a great deal of judgment-driven evaluations about objects' centrality. Moreover, the central and peripheral details identified using the structure-based measure replicated the same pattern of results produced in studies using a judgment-based definition. These findings suggest that structural features associated with an object are valid predictors of whether the object is perceived as central or whether it is perceived as peripheral.