Visualization and Cognitive Abilities

The idea of obtaining subject access to information by being able to visualize an information space, and to navigate through that space toward useful or interesting information, is attractive and plausible. However, this approach to subject access requires additional cognitive processing associated with the interaction of cognitive facilities that deal with concepts and those that deal with space. This additional cognitive processing may cause problems for users, particularly in dealing with the dimensions, the details, and the symbols of information space. Further, it seems likely that different cognitive abilities are associated with conceptual and spatial cognition. As a result, users who deal well with subject access using traditional conceptual approaches may experience difficulty in using visualization and navigation. An experiment designed to investigate the effects of different cognitive abilities on the use of both conceptual and spatial representations of information is outlined.published or submitted for publicatio