Understanding Visual Clutter

视觉混乱是我们许多人每天都会遇到的事情，无论是桌面上杂乱的物品，真实的还是虚拟的，繁忙街道上杂乱的标志，还是x射线屏幕上杂乱的物体。尽管我们有直觉，但我们对如何科学地定义视觉混乱知之甚少。我们可以主观地判断，但是没有一个明确的定义。在国家科学基金会的资助下，罗森霍尔茨博士正在利用我们对视觉感知系统的了解来开发一个数学模型，可以估计视觉显示中的混乱程度。该模型基于一个简单的概念，即当难以在不降低性能的情况下向显示器添加项目时，就会出现混乱。这个想法有一个违反直觉的结果，即杂乱不是物品总数的简单函数。相反，杂乱是由于许多物品与其他因素（如物品排列、形状和颜色）的复杂相互作用造成的。该模型将在各种视觉显示的背景下，针对人类观察者所感知到的杂波测量进行测试。这些措施包括主体判断以及一些既定的人类绩效指标。这些实验的结果将促进我们对视觉场景如何被感知的理解，这些进步可能有助于减少显示器中的杂乱，这些努力即使不是至关重要，也是有帮助的。

Visual clutter is something many of us encounter everyday, whether it is the clutter of items on a desktop, real or virtual, the clutter of signs on a busy street, or the clutter of objects on x-ray screening display. Our intuitions notwithstanding, we know surprisingly little about how to define visual clutter scientifically. We can judge it subjectively, but the problem of formulating an explicit definition has gone unsolved. With NSF funding, Dr. Rosenholtz is using what we know about visual perceptual systems to develop a mathematical model that can estimate the degree of clutter in a visual display. The model is based on the simple notion that clutter begins when it becomes difficult to add items to a display without degrading performance. There is a counterintuitive consequence to this idea, which is that clutter is not a simple function of the total number of items. Instead, clutter is due to the complex interplay of a number of items with other factors such as item arrangement, shape, and color. The model will be tested against measures of clutter as perceived by human observers, in the context of a variety of visual displays. The measures include subject judgments as well as a number of established human performance metrics. The results of these experiments will advance our understanding of how visual scenes are perceived, and these advances may help with efforts to reduce clutter in displays where such efforts are helpful if not critical.