An experimental assessment of semantic apprehension of graphical linguistics

Visual displays of information (such as dashboards) have become very sophisticated in rendering world semantics but neglect display semantics, leading to what is commonly called information overload. Underlying storage and retrieval research has been utilizing semantic and cognitive theory to drive the current implementations of ontology markup using the resource description framework (RDF) and Web ontology language (OWL) for over a decade. Yet despite these semantically rich underlying description logics, and despite the very large and mature stream of cognitive and neuroscience theory literature on visual perception and attention, memory, and linguistics, this is one aspect within the area of information visualization and human factors research where empirically tested semantic theory has not yet caught up, and begs for theory-driven research into display semantics using what might be termed “graphical linguistics.” We conducted an experiment to assess the cognitive effort of interpreting domain general knowledge using the same information represented in three forms, and found that graphical linguistics reduce cognitive effort for a specific type of task involving high-density time-sensitive information typically found in situation control rooms.