Cognitive differences and their impact on information perception: an empirical study combining survey and eye tracking data

Research shows that the quality of managerial decision making is dependent on both the availability and the interpretation of information. Visualizations are widely used to transform raw data into a more understandable format and to compress the constantly growing amount of information being produced. However, research in this area is highly fragmented and results are contradicting. A possible explanation for inconsistent results is the neglect of individual characteristics such as experience, working memory capacity, or cultural back-ground. We propose a preliminary model based on an extensive literature review on cognition theory that sheds light on potential individual antecedents of information processing efficiency. Our preliminary results based on eye tracking, automated span tasks, as well as survey data show that domain expertise, spatial ability and long term orientation exert a significant influence on this cognitive construct.