Brain Imaging Studies of Human Interaction with Well- and Poorly-Mapped Configural Displays

Abstract

In this paper we report the first application of the Steady State Probe Topography (SSPT) neuroimaging technique (Silberstein, 1992) to the design of configural displays for continuous monitoring tasks. Two studies replicated and extended the performance results of Buttigieg and Sanderson (1991) in which high-level system constraints that subjects had to monitor were either well-mapped or poorly mapped to visual emergent features of digital, bargraph, or shape displays. SSPT results for poorly-mapped displays all showed prefrontal excitation indicative of high mental workload and lateralization of excitation, regardless of the kind of display. However, SSPT results for well-mapped displays showed less prefrontal involvement the more directly the constraint being monitored was represented in the display. The display supporting best performance showed no prefrontal involvement at all, but instead involvement of areas associated with form perception and visual attention, indicating a low-workload perceptual strategy. We interpret these results in the context of recent work on ecological display design and indicate future directions for neuroimaging studies of human interaction with dynamic systems.