"Lost in hyperspace": cognitive mapping and navigation in a hypertext environment

From the writers: "This paper describes an experiment which looks at how the users of a hypertext document cognitively represent its layout. A document was formed into three different hypertext styles and was presented to the readers, they were then asked a series of questions about information contained in the hypertexts. The way the users found the answers and the time taken was recorded, they were also ask to lay out cards, with reduced versions of the screen on them, on a board and as they thought them to be arranged in the document and also to draw any connecting hypertext links they thought existed between these screens. The users selected for this experiment consisted of 27 university undergraduates 15 male and 12 female with a mean age of 20.5 years with little or no computing experience. They were each assigned one of the three hypertext methods and their performance was recorded. The three methods consisted of a hierarchical, a mixed and an index based method."