Visual Monitoring of Multi-Channel Displays

These studies were concerned with assessing the ability of untrained Ss to monitor alphameric multi-channel displays for signals based upon the simultaneous values of all the channels. The number of channels to be monitored (8, 12, 16, or 24), the range of values per channel (2, 4, or 8), and the number of different signals, or critical sequences, to watch for (8, 16, or 24) were varied in three experiments. In Experiment I time between changes in the display was 10 seconds, in Experiment II it was 5 seconds, and in Experiment III it was 2.5 seconds. Experiment I indicated that Ss when monitoring 8 channels, correctly detected over 95 percent of the signals. In Experiments I And II, Ss made 80 percent or more correct detections when watching up to 16 channels. performance continued to decrease with a further increase in the number of channels to be watched and with a further increase in the rate of display change. Levels per channel were important only when either 16 or more channels were monitored or when the display hanged every 2.5 seconds. As the number of different critical sequences (signals) for which Ss watched increased, correct responses decreased significantly, although this variable exerted the least effect upon performance.