Abstract
The acquisition of mental models and the effect of instructions and a display aid on the performance on a complex dynamic processing system were examined in this experiment. Thirty subjects monitored a dynamic bar graph display of six system variables and were tested under three different conditions: 1) subjects were given contextual instructions and a picture display-aid which provided a perceptual context in which to interpret the changing variables (group P/B). 2) Subjects were only provided non-context instructions and tested by a bar graph display (group B). 3) A transfer group was trained under the same condition as same as group P/B and tested with the bar graph display (group P/B - B). The data showed that the combination of the context instructions and the meaningful display aid improved subjects' performance significantly. The accuracy of diagnosis of the group P/B was the highest among the three groups. It was also seen that training with the context instructions themselves could improve the accuracy of diagnosis although the difference between the transfer group and group B was not significant statistically.
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