An Eye-tracking Study on Expert/Novice Differences During Climate Graph Reading Tasks: Implications for Climate Communication

Thursday 4:30pm-5:30pm Red Gym
Poster Session


Rachel Atkins, North Carolina State University
karen mcneal, Auburn University Main Campus
Sarah Luginbuhl, North Carolina State University
The communication of climate change is often a difficult task due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topic in addition to the challenges of communicating these topics with their intended audiences. Two aspects of communication that can be within the control of the communicator (often a science researcher) include the content and method in which science is communicated. Much of the information scientists present as evidence of climate change is communicated through graphs. In order to present this information more effectively, it is important to understand how novices navigate this data differently than experts. In this study, students viewed graphs displaying climate change information to determine their gaze patterns while viewing and answering questions. These were compared to gaze patterns of scientific experts (geoscience graduate students). According to gaze and fixation data, experts spend more time on task-relevant areas of a graph (legend, axes, data trends, etc.) than novices who focus their attention on task-relevant information such as graph title and understanding the question. Novice students who performed high on the pre-assessment performed more expert-like on measured metrics than their peers who performed lower on the pre-assessment.

Results from this study suggest that in order to close the communication gap between experts and novices while viewing climate change graphs educators should: 1) alter graphs to allow for the data to be viewed more quickly and for a longer period of time by novices and/or provide text describing the graph or figure 2) provide specific training during courses that scaffold graph reading skills, or 3) provide more opportunities for students to explain and interpret graphs and figures shown in courses with an emphasis on formulating their own ideas from the graphs and applying prior knowledge to explanations.
Poster (Acrobat (PDF) 1MB Mar14 18)