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From: kirlik@chmsr.gatech.edu (Alex Kirlik)
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: Individual Differences
Message-ID: <31732@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Date: 24 Jun 91 20:51:30 GMT
References: <80905@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <1063@DIALix.oz.au>
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Reply-To: kirlik@chmsr.UUCP (Alex Kirlik)
Organization: ISyE, Georgia Tech
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In <80905@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> palan-t@acsu.buffalo.edu (thiagarajan palanivel) writes:
>
>>My own work is focussed on whether there exist any pairings between users' 
>>cognitive profiles (the combimation of cognitive processing abilities and 
> For example, can one 
>>predict that a user with high verbal and reasoning skills but relatively low 
>>spatial skills, will perform (the same task) better on a Command Language based interface, than on a Direct Manipulation based interface. From a different pointof view, can one say for example, that verbal ability is the single best 

Possibly.  You might want to be careful about the "task" you select, though.
The relative contributions of the underlying task and the interface in 
making a task predominantly "verbal" or "spatial" is not really known.  For
example, high spatial ability people have been found to be superior to
low spatial's on text editing (perhaps suprisingly).  The offered 
explanation is that the user needs good spatial abilities to maintain
an understanding of layout of the entire document, based on a limited
access through a window (the current screen).  That is, knowing "that's
up there," "that's down there."  If you're interested in the contribution
of the interface, rather than the underlying task, you need to be careful
about your experimental design (e.g., cross type (verbal/spatial) of task
with type of interface.  As I said, we don't yet know how depth (task)
and surface (interface) properties contribute in determining what is a
mostly spatial and what is a mostly verbal task.  But that may be one of
the contributions you could make.  Good luck.


Alex 

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