Effect of calendar layout on calendar search

Abstract

Although the conventional calendar month is formatted as an arrangement of 7 days × 5 weeks, the weeks are sometimes configured as horizontal rows and sometimes as vertical columns, and the day which begins the week is sometimes Sunday and sometimes Monday. The experiment reported here looked at the effects of configuration and beginning day on search performance. The procedure had subjects make a two-alternative forced-choice response, pressing one key whenever the information in a visually presented statement (e.g., the 27th is a Sunday) and in a calendar month were consistent, and pressing another key whenever a statement and a month were inconsistent. The mixed design had repeated observations on configuration and on beginning day, and four levels of a between subjects factor—knowledge about layout. The results showed: (1) search was faster for horizontal than for vertical weeks; (2) search was faster when the same layout was blocked over trials than when different layouts alternated over trials; (3) search time was unaffected by whichever day began the week; (4) search accuracy was unaffected by any experimental manipulation. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Keywords:

• Visual search
• Response time
• Tabular information