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Published in:
2012 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Representing Category and Continuum: Visualizing Thought
Authors : Barbara Tversky, James E. Corter, Lixiu Yu, David L. Mason, Jeffrey V. Nickerson
Published in: Diagrammatic Representation and Inference
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
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Abstract thought has roots in the spatial world. Abstractions are expressed in the ways things are arranged in the world as well as the ways people talk and gesture. Mappings to the page should be better when they are
congruent
, that is, when the abstract concept matches the spatial one. Congruent mappings can be revealed in people’s performance and preferences. Congruence is supported here for visual representations of continuum and category. Congruently mapping a continuous concept, frequency, to a continuous visual variable and mapping a categorical concept, class inclusion, to a categorical visual variable were preferred and led to better performance than the reverse mappings.