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The different effects of thinking aloud and writing on graph comprehension

<20> This paper presents an original finding that the quality of people's comprehension of information presented in statistical graphs is significantly affected by their mode of interaction. The study also revealed that this effect is not universal but depends on the format of the graph being used. The significance of this paper is in its demonstration that effective interpretation of statistical graphics is determined by a wider range of interacting cognitive and visual factors than previously thought and the implication that, (in contrast to current practice) mode of interpretation must be considered when seeking to optimise information extraction from statistical graphs.