Horizontal versus Vertical Display of Numbers

Abstract

A task was constructed to compare performance on a horizontal to that of a vertical array of 3-digit numbers. 16 Ss were required to scan arrays of pairs of numbers and mark the pairs that contained nonidentical members. The average time required to complete the vertical array was 73 sec and 44 sec. for the horizontal. The finding that an average of 66% more time was spent on the vertical than on the horizontal array is significant at the .005 level.