Issue 4
Vol. 44
2002

Comprehension of preference graphs
Christof Körner, Dietrich Albert

Summary
The authors investigated readers’ comprehension and miscomprehension whilst interpreting preference graphs. The knowledge available to readers of preference graphs, i.e., graphs that represented preferences among a set of objects was manipulated. Participants had to answer interpretive questions that were presented together with respective graphs. We assumed that the answers given to those questions were based on misconceptions (pieces of wrong knowledge) if appropriate knowledge was not available. Indeed, a large amount of consistently wrong answers was observed and linked to specific misconceptions. We also found that a substantial number of participants maintained misconceptions despite having the appropriate knowledge available. This result supported the assumption that misconceptions are not only a result of a lack of knowledge but may be induced by properties of the graphs themselves.

Key words: graph comprehension, misconceptions, graph properties

Christof Körner
Institut für Psychologie
Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
Austria
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Department of Experimental Psychology
University of Bristol
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or via e-mail: christof.koerner@bristol.ac.uk