A Visual Design Framework and Assessment to Inform Instruction

As evidence of meeting program criteria required by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), engineering technology (ET) students are expected to both read and create graphical communications. Academic librarians’ visual literacy (VL) instruction can support ET students’ ability to communicate through graphics. Under comprehensive VL instruction, teaching visual design principles is an area of VL that supports graphical communication. An adaptive comparative judgment (ACJ) assessment was given to 115 ET students to inform visual design instruction and future research. A visual design framework supplemented the assessment to familiarize students with visual design principles. ACJ offers an alternative assessment model because instead of grading against a rubric of learning outcomes, it uses context to judge the quality of a work. The assessment results outline specific areas to focus visual design instruction for students to effectively navigate and create graphical communications.

Testing early and late connectivity dynamics in the lab: an experiment using 4-agent micro-societies

How does the order of individuals' interactions affect the emergence of shared conventions at the population level? The answer to this question is relevant for a number of fields, such as cultural evolution, linguistics, cognitive science or behavioral economics. In this study we investigate experimentally how two different network connectivity dynamics affect the evolution of the diversity of cultural variants of the communication system. We report an experiment in the lab in which participants engage in a Pictionary-like graphical communication task as members of a 4-participant micro-society, interacting in pairs with the other three members of the community across 4 rounds. The experiment has two main goals: First, to evaluate the effect of two network connectivity dynamics (early and late) on the evolution of the convergence of micro-societies on shared communicative conventions under controlled conditions. Second, to compare the predictions of the agent-based model described in a previous study (Segovia-Martín, Walker, Fay, & Tamariz, 2019) against experimental data, and calibrate the model to find the best-fitting parameter setting. Our experimental data shows that, as predicted by the model, an early connectivity dynamic increases convergence and a late connectivity dynamic slows down convergence. We found significant differences between conditions in round 3 and round 4. We estimate the best-fit parameter combination for the 96 data structures coded. Medium to high content bias, neutral to egocentric coordination bias and memory size of 3 rounds was associated with a better model fit. In the light of the model evaluation and the experiment outcome, we discuss the impact of our predictions on social influence research and possible factors that might help to improve model precision.

Measuring the Effectiveness of the Graphical Communication of Hurricane Storm Surge Threat

Color is an important variable in the graphical communication of weather information. The effect of different colors on understanding and perception is not always considered prior to releasing an image to the public. This study tests the influence of color as well as legend values on the effectiveness of communicating storm surge potential. In this study, 40 individuals participated in an eye-tracking experiment in which they responded to eight questions about five different storm scenarios. Color was varied among three palettes (shades of blue, green to red, and yellow to purple), and legends were varied to display categorical values in feet (<3, 3–6, etc.) or text descriptions (low, medium, etc.). Questions measured accuracy, perceived risk, and perceived helpfulness. Overall, accuracy was high and few statistically significant differences were observed across color/legend combinations. Evidence did suggest that the blue values condition may have been the most difficult to interpret. Statistical support for this claim includes longer response times and a greater number of eye fixations on the legend. The feet values condition also led to a greater number of eye fixations on the legend and letter markers than the category text condition. The green–red condition was the strong preference among all groups as the color condition that best informs the public about storm surge risk. This color palette led to slightly higher levels of accuracy and perceived helpfulness, but the differences were not significant.

Iconicity

This paper explores the role of iconicity in spoken language and other human communication systems. First, we concentrate on graphical and gestural communication and show how semantically motivated iconic signs play an important role in creating such communication systems from scratch. We then consider how iconic signs tend to become simplified and symbolic as the communication system matures and argue that this process is driven by repeated interactive use of the signs. We then consider evidence for iconicity at the level of the system in graphical communication and finally draw comparisons between iconicity in graphical and gestural communication systems and in spoken language.