Components of Pictorial Informativeness

Abstract

The hypothesis that parts of a picture rated high on a subjective informativeness dimension contain readily identifiable objects and medium informativeness regions contain contextual information was investigated. One group of 20 subjects (control) saw 100-msec. presentations of pictures and indicated whether an aftercoming picture section had been contained in the flash. Another group of 20 subjects (occlusion) saw the same pictures except that the target section was occluded. Their task was to judge whether the cued section could have been contained in the picture. Subjects in the occlusion group performed significantly worse than those in the control group on high informative sections but not on medium informative sections, supporting the original hypothesis.