TV Channel Cards and Office Directories are Searched Faster When Alphabetized

There are millions of television cable channel cards in hotels, motels and homes around the world. Almost all of these lists are organized with TV channel numbers arranged in numerical order on the left and corresponding station call letters on the right. Office buildings have the building directories organized in a similar way. Such organization may be inefficient in terms of the time needed to find a specific channel. It may be more efficient to organize such lists with the station call letters arranged alphabetically at the left. To test this hypothesis participants were presented with lists of TV channels or personal names organized either in the traditional numerical order format or in an alphabetical format. The task was to find eight different TV channels or names on the two types of lists. Lists arranged alphabetically were searched significantly faster than those arranged in the traditional numerical sequence format.