The Cognition of Complex Visualizations

Our focus has been on understanding how experts and novices use complex visualizations. Recently, we have examined on how people use and understand uncertainty, especially in visualizations that display no uncertainty.

Note that this area is closely related to the graph comprehension area with simple graphs.

Primary References

Trickett, S. B. & Trafton, J. G. (2007). "What if...'': The Use of Conceptual Simulations in Scientific Reasoning. Cognitive Science, 31(5), 843-875.  PDF

Trafton, J. G., Kirschenbaum, S. S., Tsui, T. L., Miyamoto, R. T., Ballas, J. A., & Raymond, P. D. (2000). Turning Pictures into Numbers: Extracting and Generating Information from Complex Visualizations. International Journal of Human Computer Studies 53 (5), 827-850.  PDF

Other Relevant References

Trickett, S. B., Trafton, J. G., Saner, L. D., & Schunn, C. D. (2007). "I don't know what's going on there": The Use of Spatial Transformations to Deal With and Resolve Uncertainty in Complex Visualizations. In M. C. Lovett & P. Shah (Eds.), Thinking with Data (pp. 65-86). New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. PDF

Schunn, C. D., Saner, L. D., Kirschenbaum, S. S., Trafton, J. G., & Littleton, E. B. (2007). Complex visual data analysis, uncertainty, and representation. In M. C. Lovett & P. Shah (Eds.), Thinking with Data (pp. 27-64). New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. PDF

Trafton, J. G., & Hoffman, R. R. (2007). Computer-aided Visualization in Meteorology. In R. R. Hoffman (Ed.), Expertise out of context (pp. 337-358). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  PDF

Kirschenbaum, S. S., Trafton, J. G., & Pratt, E. A. (2007). Comparative Cognitive Task Analysis. In R. R. Hoffman (Ed.), Expertise out of context (pp. 327-336). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  PDF

Trafton, J. G., Trickett, S. B., Stitzlein, C. A., Saner, L., Schunn, C. D., & Kirschenbaum, S. S. (2006). The relationship between Spatial Transformations and Iconic Gestures Spatial Cognition and Computation. 6(1), 1-29.  PDF

Trafton, J. G., Trickett, S. B., & Mintz, F. E. (2005). Connecting internal and external representations: Spatial transformations of scientific visualizations. Foundations of Science. 10(1), 89-106.  PDF

Bogacz, S., & Trafton, J. G. (2005). Understanding Dynamic and Static displays: Using Images to Reason Dynamically. Cognitive Systems Research. 6(4), 312-319. PDF

Trickett, S. B., Schunn, C. D., & Trafton, J. G. (2004). Puzzles and Peculiarities: How Scientists Attend to and Process Anomalies During Data Analysis (2004). In M. E. Gorman, A. Kincannon, D. Gooding, & R. D. Tweney (Eds.), Spherical horses and shared toothbrushes: Recent developments in scientific and technological thinking.  PDF

Tricket, S. B. & Trafton, J. G. (2004). Spatial Transformations in graph comprehension. In A. F. Blackwell, K. Marriott, and A. Shimojima (Eds.). Diagrammatic Representation and Inference.  PDF

Trafton, J. G. (2004). Dynamic Mental Models in weather forecasting. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 48th Annual Meeting.  PDF

Trafton, J. G., Marshall, S., Mintz, F., & Trickett, S. B. (2002). Extracting explicit and implicit information from complex visualizations (pp. 206-220). In M. Hegarty, B. Meyer, & H. Narayanan (Eds.) Diagrammatic Representation and Inference.  PDF

Contact:
Greg Trafton

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