Display Formatting in Information Integration and Nonintegration Tasks

The impact of various formats used in the design of visual displays was investigated in two reaction-time (RT) experiments. Analog, digital, and verbal formats were employed with numerical judgment tasks requiring either the integration or non integration of display elements. As predicted by multiple resource theory, the dual task (nonintegration) benefited from a mixed-format display. Integration tasks, however, revealed a contrasting benefit of pure-format displays. Generally speaking, analog indicators were responded to more quickly than were digital or verbal indicators. Three guidelines for display design are suggested.