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High-Speed
Visual
Estimation
Using
Preattentive
Processing
Christopher
G.
Healey,
Kellogg
S.
Booth, and
James
T.
Enns
ACM Transaction on Computer-Human Interaction (in press, scheduled for July
1996 issue)
TR-93-51
ABSTRACT
A new method is presented for performing rapid and accurate numerical
estimation. It is derived from principles arising in an area of cognitive
psychology called preattentive processing. Preattentive processing refers to
an initial organization of the human visual system based on operations
believed to be rapid, automatic, and spatially parallel. Examples of visual
features that can be detected in this way include hue, intensity, orientation,
size, and motion. We believe that studies from preattentive vision should be
used to assist in the design of visualization tools, especially those for
which high speed target, boundary, and region detection are important. In our
present study, we investigated two known preattentive features (hue and
orientation) in the context of a new task (numerical estimation) in order to
see whether preattentive estimation was possible. Our experiments tested
displays that were designed to visualize data from simulations being run in
the Department of Oceanography. The results showed that rapid and accurate
estimation is indeed possible using either hue or orientation. Furthermore,
random variation of one of these features resulted in no interference when
subjects estimated the numerosity of the other. To determine the robustness of
our results, we varied two important display parameters, display duration and
feature difference, and found boundary conditions for each. Implications of
our results for application to real-word data and tasks are discussed.