title: Utilising psychophysical techniques to investigate the effects of age, typeface design, size and display polarity on glance legibility.
abstract: Psychophysical research on text legibility has historically investigated factors such as size, colour and contrast, but there has been relatively little direct empirical evaluation of typographic design itself, particularly in the emerging context of glance reading. In the present study, participants performed a lexical decision task controlled by an adaptive staircase method. Two typefaces, a 'humanist' and 'square grotesque' style, were tested. Study I examined positive and negative polarities, while Study II examined two text sizes. Stimulus duration thresholds were sensitive to differences between typefaces, polarities and sizes. Typeface also interacted significantly with age, particularly for conditions with higher legibility thresholds. These results are consistent with previous research assessing the impact of the same typefaces on interface demand in a simulated driving environment. This simplified methodology of assessing legibility differences can be adapted to investigate a wide array of questions relevant to typographic and interface designs. Practitioner Summary: A method is described for rapidly investigating relative legibility of different typographical features. Results indicate that during glance-like reading induced by the psychophysical technique and under the lighting conditions considered, humanist-style type is significantly more legible than a square grotesque style, and that black-on-white text is significantly more legible than white-on-black.
authors.affiliation: a Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab , New England University Transportation Center , Cambridge , MA , USA.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dobres
authors.affiliation: b Monotype Imaging, Inc. , Woburn , MA , USA.
authors.forename: Nadine
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Chahine
authors.affiliation: a Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab , New England University Transportation Center , Cambridge , MA , USA.
authors.forename: Bryan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Reimer
authors.affiliation: b Monotype Imaging, Inc. , Woburn , MA , USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gould
authors.affiliation: a Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab , New England University Transportation Center , Cambridge , MA , USA.
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mehler
authors.affiliation: a Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab , New England University Transportation Center , Cambridge , MA , USA.
authors.forename: Joseph F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Coughlin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000465:Algorithms; D001334:Automobile Driving / Q000523:psychology; D001900:Boston; D003116:Color; D003196:Computer Graphics; D015350:Contrast Sensitivity / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008029:Lighting; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011601:Psychophysics; D011932:Reading; D012684:Sensory Thresholds; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: HMI design; Measurement; psychophysics; reading; typography