The effects of semantic grouping on visual search

Abstract

This paper reports on work-in-progress to better understand how users visually interact with hierarchically organized semantic information. Experimental reaction time and eye movement data are reported that give insight into strategies people employ while searching visual layouts containing words that are either grouped by category (i.e. semantically cohesive) or randomly grouped. Additionally, sometimes the category labels of the cohesive groups are displayed as part of the group. Preliminary results suggest that: (a) When groups are cohesive, people tend to search labeled and unlabeled layouts similarly. (b) People seem to trust the categorical information of labels more than non-labels. This work will be used to extend current computational models of visual search to better predict users visual interaction with interfaces.