Search Strategies and Inference in the Exploration of Scientific Diagrams

The salience assigned to information in a diagrammatic display may vary according to the goals and background of the viewer. As well as being a function of the characteristics of the diagrammatic material presented, the way in which an individual extracts and acts upon information from such displays will be a function of the characteristics of the individual's particular mental representation of that display type. The strategies used by professional meteorologists to explore a meteorological chart were compared with those used by non‐meteorologists. Differences found between the groups involved both the patterns of exploration used and the way inference was used as a basis for decision‐making. These differences were interpreted as reflecting differences in underlying mental representation. The findings raise a number of questions concerning ways in which diagrammatic material is treated during instruction in subjects such as science.