Movement Compatibility for Two-Dimensional Lever Control and Digital Counter

This paper studies the strength and reversibility of direction-of-motion stereotypes and response times for a digital counter with 2-D (four-way) lever controls. The results showed that the forward-for-increase (FI), backward-for-decrease (BD), up-for-increase (UI), and down-for-decrease (DD) stereotypes were generally weak in the four-way lever-digital counter configuration, with the FI-BD and UI-DD stereotypes being dominant at the horizontal and vertical planes, respectively. The FI-BD stereotypes at the horizontal planes were generally stronger than the UI-DD stereotypes at the vertical planes, indicating that the horizontal planes are the desirable planes for positioning a four-way lever in working with the digital counter. In consideration of the mean stereotype strengths and indexes of reversibility, the compatibility of the lever control-digital counter was much lower than that of the four-way lever-circular display configuration found in a previous study. The analysis of the contribution of component principles also confirmed that the UI, DD, FI, and BD stereotypes were much weaker than the stereotypes found in the four-way lever-circular display combination. The findings suggested that a circular display is a better partner than a digital counter with a four-way lever.