Problem solving is a composite cognitive process, invoking a number of cognitive mechanisms, such as perception and memory. Individuals may form collectives to solve a given problem together in collaboration, especially when complexity is perceived to be high. To determine if and when collaborative problem solving is desired in the context of visual graph analysis, we compare ad hoc pairs to individuals and nominal pairs, when solving different tasks in mixed reality. We discuss the results of an experiment with 72 participants performed in two countries and three languages. We apply the concept of task instance complexity to quantify the visual demand of tasks used in the experiment. Our results show the importance of using nominal groups as a benchmark for evaluating collaborative virtual environments. We conclude that 3D graph representation is not sufficient to induce better collaborative results compared to the benchmark.

翻译：问题解决是一种复合认知过程，涉及感知与记忆等多种认知机制。当感知到问题复杂度较高时，个体可能形成集体以协作方式共同解决问题。为探究视觉图分析背景下协作问题解决的必要性及适用条件，本研究在混合现实环境中对比了临时配对组、独立个体组及名义配对组解决不同任务的表现。我们讨论了一项在两国以三种语言开展、包含72名参与者的实验结果，并运用任务实例复杂度概念量化实验中任务的视觉需求。研究结果表明，将名义组作为评估协作虚拟环境的基准具有重要意义。我们得出结论：相较于基准组，三维图表征本身不足以产生更优的协作效果。