SSP Group Meeting
Wednesday, 14th August, 11am-12pm
Division of Informatics, 80 South Bridge, Room F13


 

Experiment on Causal Perception of Aviation Accidents by Using Web Site Synthesis

Siu-Wai Leung

There might be certain kinds of navigation and presentation styles that will hinder or support the users' ability to interpret evidence about aviation accident information on the web. We conducted a preliminary experiment on (1) two cognitive science models of causal perception, i.e., contingency theory and Power PC theory, (2) causal and temporal rhetoric, and (3) sensible and cryptic terminology, and (4) five simple patterns of accident events. For producing many different web sites with different arrangements of web elements and accident information, we found web site synthesis is indispensable to the parameterised design and quick construction of such a population of web sites. Even though our interpretation of the results was limited by the number of participants, there were a couple of new and interesting findings in the causal perception as well as some unresolved issues for further investigation.