Maximum Information-Handling Rates for Sequentially Presented Visual Stimuli

Abstract

The purposes of this study were: (1) To determine information-handling rates for sequentially presented stimuli; (2) demonstrate the relationship between information-handling rate and size of the surface that the operator must monitor, and (3) determine the effect of variations in duration of stimulus exposure. Performance measures were obtained for thirty subjects on three different panel sizes at two different exposures. Two methods were used in obtaining data: a method of sequentially varied stimuli and a method of randomly varied stimuli.

All performance curves indicate a monotonic decrease as the speed of presentation was increased. Speed of presentation and the interaction of speed of presentation and panel size were determined to be significant at the 0.005 and 0.05 levels, respectively. The effect of the exposure times variable was nonsignificant.

The method of randomly presented stimuli resulted in significantly better performance than the method of sequentially varied stimuli.

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