Abstract
Why proofs are (usually) text based [1]if diagrams reduce inferential load [1]? The purpose of this poster is to explore ergonomic affordances of text that may encourage its use in proofs by building on prior work in attention [2,3]. We claim that textual notations may focus a reasoner’s “spotlight” of attention through serialized sequential chunks, whereas many diagrams may “diffuse” attention (enabling a reasoner to discern how elements fit together holistically, but with less focus on each element or reifying and explicitly representing connections/relationships between them).
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Coppin, P. (2010). An Attention Based Theory to Explore the Cognitive Affordances of Diagrams Relative to Text . In: Goel, A.K., Jamnik, M., Narayanan, N.H. (eds) Diagrammatic Representation and Inference. Diagrams 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6170. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14600-8_35
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14600-8_35
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