Abstract
The comprehension of hierarchical GUI menu operations was investigated in children in the process of developing their cognitive functions. Participants were 120 children aged 3-6 years. They were asked to select a target item presented on a computer screen, according to figures, colors, and patterns on menus constructed of two and three hierarchical structures. Their degree of comprehension was estimated on the basis of the success rate of selection tasks. For 3- to 5-year-old children, the success rate significantly increased with the two-structure menu than with the three-structure menu. Limited processing capacity of their short term memories, difficulty of voice-encoding, and undeveloped verbalization might have influenced their low success rates in the three-structure menu. The 6-year-old children had a success rate near 100%, which suggests that hierarchical menu images can be constructed in 6-year-old children as well as in adults. The points at which the success rate increased rapidly were observed both in the two- and three-structure menus. This suggests the existence of a critical period in the comprehension of hierarchical menus.
