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had been apparent in prior research. Examples of survey and route inference questions, which
required a true/false response, are, respectively: “The colorful maple trees are to the north and south
of Maple Street”; and “If you turn left onto Pioneer Road from the Scenic Highway and drive straight
ahead, you will eventually pass the Town Hall on your right.”
The results for cognitive fit are as follows. For survey tasks, there was no difference in accu-
racy between survey and route descriptions; problem-solving time was, however, shorter when it
was supported by a survey description. Hence, support for cognitive fit was manifested in time.
For route tasks, accuracy was superior with the route description compared to the survey descrip-
tion, supporting cognitive fit. The finding for time, however, was in the opposite direction to that
expected—a route description supporting a survey task was quicker than a route description sup-
porting a route task. Examination of the route inference questions reveals that they are consider-
ably longer and more difficult than the survey questions. For example: (1) they have at least two
reference points compared with a single reference for the survey tasks; and (2) on occasion, the
directions specified in the question are the reverse of those specified in the town description.
Hence, although route questions were still answered more effectively with the route than with the
survey description, it is perhaps not surprising that participants responded more quickly to route
questions using the survey description than the route description. This observation highlights the
importance of ensuring that task descriptions are comparable across treatments. In this case, com-
plexity was not comparable across treatments.
Further, it is interesting to ponder the effect that drawing a map based on both survey and route
descriptions might have on the comparisons made. A map would, in effect, be a survey description,
from which it would be easier to respond to survey than to route questions. Although the researchers
do not report on the numbers of participants who drew maps from each description, one might infer
that few did because the accuracy for route tasks was better with route descriptions than survey
descriptions; if all participants used “maps,” there would have been no differences in performance
with survey and route descriptions, irrespective of the task. In future research, it would be worth-
while to capture the way in which participants approached the problems.
The second study of this nature is that of Beckman (2002). This study extends the theory of
cognitive fit to a domain that is quite unlike any other studied to date, that of human performance
on motor tasks, specifically tasks involving physical control of ground vehicles. Studying cogni-
tive fit in this new domain results in a new dimension of fit. The two task types addressed in the
study are: (1) control of either rotation or translation changes, but not both concurrently; and (2)
simultaneous control of combined rotation and translation changes. The virtual vehicle being con-
trolled was the M1 tank, which can only move back and forth along the x axis (translation) and
rotate around the y axis. The tasks were performed with physical user interfaces that either sepa-
rated or combined translational and rotational control.
The user interface presents a “model” for viewing what the problem solver has to work with in
order to complete the task (Norman, 1993). Hence, the user interface in these motor tasks corre-
sponds to the problem representation in the theory of cognitive fit. The two interfaces were a simple
vehicle controller and a joystick. The joystick allowed rotation and translation in the forward/reverse
direction, both along the vertical axis. On the other hand, the simple vehicle controller had the same
two degrees of motion freedom, with translational vehicle motion being controlled through the hor-
izontal axis, and rotational vehicle motion through the vertical axis. Display characteristics for each
interface were identical.
Hypotheses, which were based on the theory of cognitive fit, were tested using three “separa-
tion” tasks, which should be facilitated by the separate-control interface, the simple vehicle con-
troller, and one “combination” task, which should be facilitated by the integrated-control interface,
the joystick. The dependent measures, which were appropriate to the specific task, involved
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