The Gestalt principle of proximity grouping was investigated as a possible source of design principles for visual displays. The results from four letter matching tasks indicate that the effect of grouping depended on the task. Specifically, rhyme matches showed an effect of grouping which was twice as large as that for physical, name, or category matches. It may be that tasks requiring the phonetic coding of information will benefit most from proximity grouping, although tasks requiring visual, visual associative, or categorical coding may also benefit to a lesser degree.
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