Quantitative effects of overlay clutter and information access effort: Examining the scan-clutter trade-off in displays with geospatial maps.

Warden, Amelia C.; Wickens, Christopher D.; Clegg, Benjamin A.; Ortega, Francisco R. · 2024 · Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied

DOI: 10.1037/xap0000512

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (DOI — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This study investigates the "scan-clutter trade-off" in displays presenting information from multiple geospatial databases, specifically examining how overlaying data affects visual search performance compared to separating displays. The research addresses a critical design challenge in human factors: while overlaying information (e.g., on head-mounted displays) reduces the effort required to scan between separate screens, it increases display clutter, which imposes attentional costs. The authors aim to quantify these competing effects to determine optimal display configurations for tasks requiring either focused attention on a single data source or integration across multiple sources. The researchers conducted two experiments using computational metrics to quantify clutter, including a feature congestion metric. Participants viewed information from a geographical terrain database (far domain) and a schematic map database (near domain). In Experiment 1, displays were presented either as overlaid or adjacent. Experiment 2 expanded this to include overlay, adjacent, and more separated displays. The study systematically manipulated the magnitude of clutter (low, medium, high), spatial separation, and task attentional requirements. Participants performed judgments that required either focusing attention on one database or integrating information across both, allowing the researchers to measure response times under varying conditions of visual complexity and layout. Results indicated that response times were significantly modulated by clutter magnitude, spatial separation, and task type. Crucially, the costs associated with overlay clutter dominated the costs of spatial separation, particularly in tasks requiring focused attention on a specific database. The computational feature congestion metric effectively predicted performance outcomes but was found to be more accurate when incorporating an overlay component, which amplified the measured costs of clutter. The study confirmed that overlaying near-domain imagery onto far-domain scenes increases both global density clutter and local density clutter, with the latter having a greater negative influence on performance when global clutter is high. The findings provide specific design guidelines for overlay displays, such as head-up and head-mounted displays, suggesting that the negative impact of overlay clutter is non-trivial. To minimize the scan-clutter trade-off, designers should carefully select colors for overlaid information to reduce feature heterogeneity or present information side-by-side when appropriate. The research highlights that while separated displays mitigate overlay clutter, they impose information access effort through visual scanning. However, because clutter costs often outweigh scanning costs—especially for focused attention tasks—separated displays may be preferable in high-clutter scenarios. These results offer a quantitative framework for optimizing complex information displays in safety-critical environments.

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed.

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-09; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• road complexity