EXTRANEOUS INFORMATION AND GRAPH COMPREHENSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR EFFECTIVE DESIGN CHOICES

Brandie M. Stewart, Jessica M. Cipolla, and Lisa A. Best, Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick, Canada

In recent years there has been a growing emphasis on graph literacy and researchers have begun to focus on determining how to best construct effective visual displays. The overall purpose of this study was to examine if university students could accurately extract information from different graphs presented on a computer screen. Participants were presented with two (2D) and three dimensional (3D) bar and pie charts in a PowerPoint presentation and were asked to extract specific information from the displays. Results indicated that 2D graphs led to better comprehension, particularly when complex information was presented. These results confirm previous findings and suggest that, when possible, 2D graphs are preferable to 3D graphs. Accuracy was similar for colour and black and white graphs; however, it is possible that differences were not observed because both types of graphs used in this study could be considered to have contained colour information.