Abstract

In three experiments, we examined effects of interactive visualizations and spatial ability on a task requiring participants to infer and draw cross sections of a three dimensional (3-D) object. We manipulated whether participants could interactively control a virtual 3-D visualization of the object while performing the task, and compared participants who were allowed interactive control of the visualization to those who were not allowed control. In Experiment 1, interactivity produced better performance than passive viewing, but the advantage of interactivity disappeared in Experiment 2 when we equalized visual input for the two conditions in a yoked design. In Experiments 2 and 3, differences in how interactive participants manipulated the visualization were large and related to performance. In Experiment 3, non-interactive participants who watched optimal movements of the display performed as well as interactive participants who manipulated the visualization effectively and better than interactive participants who manipulated the visualization ineffectively. Spatial ability made an independent contribution to performance on the spatial reasoning task, but did not predict patterns of interactive behavior. These

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