Information Technology Reference
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Seventy percent of the subjects in the study were information systems majors and the remainder was
psychology majors. All participants volunteered for the study and were rewarded with course credit
as required by American Psychological Association guidelines.
Forty subjects, ten in each group, completed all aspects of the experiment, followed all the
instructions, and answered all the questions. To describe the groups' visual acuity, the sixteen-
question Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (Marks, 1973) was administered.
2
As a
group, subjects also reported average to above average (mean
9.62) visual acuity
as measured by the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire and self-reported “average” facil-
ity with logic and math problems. Although subjects were not given a specific time restriction, on
average, they took about thirty-five minutes to complete all aspects of the study.
32.4, s.d.
Experimental Decision Support System
The treatment combinations used in this study were borrowed directly from those developed by
Bauer and Johnson-Laird (1993) to study deductive reasoning and inference.
3
They depicted log-
ically identical problems as either people-and-places or electric circuit scenarios, and presented
them as either text, a form of expressiveness, or diagrams, a form of visibility. An example of a
people-and-places scenario presented as text is:
While the event is occurring:
Julia is in Atlanta or Ralph is in Tacoma (or both)
Julia is in Seattle or Paul is in Philadelphia (or both)
Ralph is in Tacoma or Paul is in Philadelphia (or both)
The event is occurring. What follows?
1.
Julia's in Seattle/Paul's in Philadelphia
2.
Paul's not in Philadelphia/Ralph's not in Tacoma
3.
Julia's not in Atlanta/Ralph's not in Tacoma/Paul's in Philadelphia
4.
Julia's in Atlanta/Paul's not in Philadelphia/Ralph's in Tacoma
A complete listing of the expressiveness treatments for the people-and-places scenario and the
electrical circuits scenario are presented in Appendix A. Figure 5.4 shows the same problem as
the example, but depicted as a visibility diagram. As can be seen, the shapes corresponding to the
person fit only into a similarly shaped slot corresponding to a place. Subjects selected an alterna-
tive from a list of multiple-choice answers to the right of either the text or the diagram. To inves-
tigate the hypothesis of the study reported here, subjects also recorded their decision confidence
in their selection.
The second problem representation, also borrowed from Bauer and Johnson-Laird, is an elec-
tric circuit scenario. An example of this scenario as text is:
While the light is on:
Switch A or B is on (or both)
Switch B is off or C is on (or both)
The light is on.
What follows?
1.
Nothing
2.
Close switch B and C
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