Colour cues as location aids in lengthy texts on screen and paper

Abstract

Readers of documents on CRT displays report difficulties in remembering whereabouts in a lengthy text they previously read something. Four experiments explore whether subdividing such texts, at appropriate thematic boundaries, into five successive coloured sections can aid readers' retrieval of information. Experiment 1, using texts presented on coloured paper, showed that this use of colour helped readers relocate information. Experiment 2 presented the same texts on a CRT, but variation in the colour of the characters on the screen did not help readers relocate information. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of experiment 2, with texts differing in both content and structure from those used previously. Experiment 4, again using coloured text on a CRT display, showed that giving readers a visible guide to the ordering of the coloured sections was not sufficient to restore the advantage that coloured pages had for texts presented on paper. The implications of these findings for variation in the background and foreground colouring of multi-window displays are discussed, but the main conclusion concerns the caution needed when transferring information design solutions across media.