Humans have a uniquely sophisticated ability to see past superficial features and to understand the relational structure of the world around us. This ability often requires that we compare structures, finding commonalities and differences across visual depictions that are arranged in space, such as maps, graphs, or diagrams. Although such visual comparison of relational structures is ubiquitous in classrooms, textbooks, and news media, surprisingly little is known about how to facilitate this process. Here we suggest a new principle of spatial alignment, whereby visual comparison is substantially more efficient when visuals are placed perpendicular to their structural axes, such that the matching components of the visuals are in direct alignment. In four experiments, this direct alignment led to faster and more accurate comparison than other placements of the same patterns. We discuss the spatial alignment principle in connection to broader work on relational comparison and describe its implications for design and instruction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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空间对齐有助于视觉比较。

人类具有独特的复杂能力，可以看到过去的肤浅特征并了解我们周围世界的关系结构。这种能力通常要求我们比较结构，在空间上排列的视觉描述（例如地图，图形或图表）中找到共同点和差异。尽管这种关系结构的视觉比较在教室，教科书和新闻媒体中无处不在，但令人惊讶的是，人们对如何促进这一过程知之甚少。在这里，我们提出了一种空间对齐的新原理，即当将视觉对象垂直于其结构轴放置时，视觉比较实际上更加有效，从而使视觉对象的匹配组件直接对齐。在四个实验中 这种直接对齐方式导致比相同图案的其他放置更快，更准确的比较。我们将讨论与空间关系原理有关的更广泛的关系比较，并描述其对设计和指导的意义。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。