Comprehension as affected by structure of problem representation

Abstract

A problem-like branching system describing what prizes (A through F) were awarded for particular outcomes of a tournament of games among three teams was presented to 200 subjects as either a verbal list with "go to" structure (Jump), a shortened verbal list (Short-Jump), nested verbal paragraphs with "if ... then..., else" structure (Nest), a matrix table (Example), or as diagrammatic representations of each of these. In tests of comprehension, the overall performance increased from lowest to highest as follows: Jump < Short-Jump ≃ Nest < Example, and this order was particularly strong for performance on complex questions relative to less complex questions. Jump and Short-Jump performance was relatively higher with diagrams and Example was lower with diagrams. Implications for a theory of problem representation and for development of computer programming languages were discussed.