scholarly journals How the fear of COVID-19 changed the way we look at human faces

PeerJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. e11380
Author(s):  
Giovanni Federico ◽  
Donatella Ferrante ◽  
Francesco Marcatto ◽  
Maria Antonella Brandimonte

Do we look at persons currently or previously affected by COVID-19 the same way as we do with healthy ones? In this eye-tracking study, we investigated how participants (N = 54) looked at faces of individuals presented as “COVID-19 Free”, “Sick with COVID-19”, or “Recovered from COVID-19”. Results showed that participants tend to look at the eyes of COVID-19-free faces longer than at those of both COVID-19-related faces. Crucially, we also found an increase of visual attention for the mouth of the COVID-19-related faces, possibly due to the threatening characterisation of such area as a transmission vehicle for SARS-CoV-2. Thus, by detailing how people dynamically changed the way of looking at faces as a function of the perceived risk of contagion, we provide the first evidence in the literature about the impact of the pandemic on the most basic level of social interaction.

2018 ◽  
Vol 95 (4) ◽  
pp. 948-970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund W. J. Lee ◽  
Shirley S. Ho

This study examines the impact of photographic–textual and risk–benefit frames on the level of visual attention, risk perception, and public support for nuclear energy and nanotechnology in Singapore. Using a 2 (photographic–textual vs. textual-only frames) × 2 (risk vs. benefit frames) × 2 (nuclear energy vs. nanotechnology) between-subject design with eye-tracking data, the results showed that photographic–textual frames elicited more attention and did have partial amplification effect. However, this was observable only in the context of nuclear energy, where public support was lowest when participants were exposed to risk frames accompanied by photographs. Implications for theory and practice were discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-179
Author(s):  
Patrícia Monteiro ◽  
João Guerreiro ◽  
Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro

Purpose Wine bottles compete for consumers’ attention in the shelf during the decisive moment of choice. This study aims to explore the role that visual attention to wine labels has on the purchase decision and the mediating role of quality perceptions and desire on such purchase behaviours. Wine awards and consumption situation are used as moderators.. Design/methodology/approach The study was conducted in Portugal and 36 individuals participated in a 2 × 2 within subjects design (awarded/not awarded × self-consumption/social-consumption). For each scenario, individuals’ attention, perceptions of quality, desire and purchase intentions were recorded. Findings Data from eye-tracking shows that, during the purchase process, the amount of attention given to a bottle is determinant of individuals’ purchase intentions, a relationship that increases in significance for bottles with awards and for when consumers are buying wine for a consumption situation involving a social environment. In addition, both quality perceptions and desire are confirmed to positively influence wines’ purchase intentions. Originality/value By using an eye monitoring method, this paper brings new insights into the wine industry by highlighting the impact that wines’ labels and different consumption situations have on individuals’ attention and purchase intention. Wine producers and retailers may benefit from the insights provided by the current study to refine their communication strategies by either highlighting product characteristics and pictorial elements, as it is the case of the awards, or communicating about their products for different consumption situations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 2423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xicheng Yin ◽  
Hongwei Wang ◽  
Qiangwei Xia ◽  
Qican Gu

In the context of social commerce, the influence of culture on consumers’ behavior and attitude is more significant. This paper empirically analyzes the influence of social interaction (perceived risk, trust, and intimacy) on consumers’ purchase intention in social commerce, and the antecedent effect of cultural dimensions (uncertainty avoidance and individualism/collectivism) on social interaction is also explored. Data were collected in China and France from consumers who had prior online shopping experience on social commerce websites. The results show that the impact of perceived risk on subsequent purchase intention in social commerce will be transferred by trust and intimacy to a certain extent. The intimacy between users contributes to trust-building, and both of their positive impacts on purchase intention would show distinct effects in different cultures. Besides, cultural dimensions are proved to have a significant effect on users’ social interaction. Although high uncertainty avoidance brings perceived risk, it can promote subsequent trust-building. These findings help provide managerial insights for social commerce community to establish effective trust mechanism in a multicultural context.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 9281
Author(s):  
Iris Schröter ◽  
Nico Rolf Grillo ◽  
Margarethe Kristine Limpak ◽  
Bilel Mestiri ◽  
Benedikt Osthold ◽  
...  

Online retailers are challenged to present their products in an appropriate way to attract customers’ attention. To test the impact of product presentation features on customers’ visual attention, webcam eye tracking might be an alternative to infrared eye tracking, especially in situations where face-to-face contact is difficult. The aim of this study was to examine whether webcam eye tracking is suitable for investigating the influence of certain exogenous factors on customers’ visual attention when visiting online clothing shops. For this purpose, screenshots of two websites of two well-known online clothing retailers were used as stimuli. Linear regression analyses were conducted to determine the influence of the spatial position and the presence of a human model on the percentage of participants visiting a product depiction. The results show that products presented by human models and located in the upper middle area of a website were visited by more participants. From this, we were able to derive recommendations for optimising product presentation in online clothing shops. Our results fit well with those of other studies on visual attention conducted with infrared eye tracking, suggesting that webcam eye tracking could be an alternative to infrared eye tracking, at least for similar research questions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sangwon Lee ◽  
Yongha Hwang ◽  
Yan Jin ◽  
Sihyeong Ahn ◽  
Jaewan Park

Machine learning, particularly classification algorithms, constructs mathematical models from labeled data that can predict labels for new data. Using its capability to identify distinguishing patterns among multi-dimensional data, we investigated the impact of three factors on the observation of architectural scenes: Individuality, education, and image stimuli. An analysis of the eye-tracking data revealed that (1) a velocity histogram was unique to individuals, (2) students of architecture and other disciplines could be distinguished via endogenous parameters, but (3) they were more distinct in terms of seeking structural versus symbolic elements. Because of the reverse nature of the classification algorithms that automatically learn from data, we could identify relevant parameters and distinguishing eye-tracking patterns that have not been reported in previous studies.


Nutrients ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 2915
Author(s):  
Saar Bossuyt ◽  
Kathleen Custers ◽  
José Tummers ◽  
Laura Verbeyst ◽  
Bert Oben

Research on front-of-pack labels (FOPLs) demonstrated that Nutri-Score is one of the most promising FOPLs regarding healthfulness estimation accuracy. Nevertheless, as consumers are exposed to both the Nutri-Score and the mandatory Nutrition Facts Panel (NFP) in the supermarket, it is key to understand if and how both labels interact. This study investigates the contribution of Nutri-Score and NFP regarding healthfulness estimation accuracy, whether this impact differs depending on the product, and what role visual attention plays. We set up an eye-tracking experiment in a controlled setting in which 398 participants rated the healthfulness of 20 products. The results confirmed the positive impact of the Nutri-Score on healthfulness estimation accuracy, though the impact was larger for equivocal (i.e., difficult to judge) products. Interestingly, NFP either had no effect (compared to a package without Nutri-Score or NFP) or a negative effect (compared to a package with Nutri-Score alone) on healthfulness estimation accuracy. Eye-tracking data corroborated that ‘cognitive overload’ issues could explain why consumers exposed to Nutri-Score alone outperformed those exposed to both Nutri-Score and NFP. This study offers food for thought for policymakers and the industry seeking to maximize the potential of the Nutri-Score.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S109-S110
Author(s):  
Chara Ioannou ◽  
Daniela Canu ◽  
Katarina Müller ◽  
Matthias Martin ◽  
Stefan Bender ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Visual attention in Schizophrenia (SZ) differs from that of neuro-typical controls, and scan-path abnormalities have been proposed as a robust marker of the disorder (Nishiura et al., 2007). In free viewing paradigms, a restricted area of visual exploration has been reported as a robust atypical finding in SZ participants across a variety of depicted contents (Beedie et al., 2011), and has been shown to be a highly efficient discriminator between SZ and healthy controls (Benson et al., 2012). Moreover, speaking about what one sees during the act of looking has been shown to impact visual exploration behavior (Klein et al., 2014). Finally, despite clinical and genetic-biological relationships between schizophrenia, autism and ADHD (Owen & O’Donovan, 2017) there is, to our knowledge, yet no direct comparison between these neurodevelopmental disorders using eye tracking. The “head-to-head” comparison is the primary objective of this study. Methods We tested four groups of adolescent and young adults, namely early-onset Schizophrenia (SZ, N=21, 15 males, mean age ± 1 standard deviation 19.7±1.7 years), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD, N=28, 15 males, 19.9±1.4 years), Autism (ASD, N=26, 25 males, 19.7±1.9 years), and typical controls (TD, N= 29, 12 males, 19.8±1.6 years). The ocular-motor task battery comprised of different free viewing tasks including free viewing of different kinds of social interactions in static pictures whilst solely viewing versus viewing-plus speaking (in counterbalanced order). Eye movements were recorded with 1.000Hz using the EyeLink 1000+ system and analyzed with Data Viewer Eyelink Software and MATLAB (Version R2017a, Mathworks, USA). Statistical Analysis was performed in SPSS Statistics 2.3 (IBM, USA). Results Visual attention of SZ patients manifested significant less gaze scatter than TD whilst merely looking at the images. During looking and speaking, however, the two groups had a similar spatial scatter of fixations. Preliminary analyses indicate that participants with ADHD and ASD did not differ from TD in this measure. Discussion Constraint gaze scatter in visual exploration is a robust and discriminating finding in schizophrenia that has been associated with the negative symptomatology of the disorder. The present results confirm our previous findings (Klein et al., 2014) and suggest that the act of speaking may partially counteract and compensate the restricted visual scanning performed by SZ participants, thus contributing to a better understanding of Visual Attention in SZ and its differentiation from other neurodevelopmental disorders.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lijie Zhou ◽  
Fei Xue

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effects of visual themes and view perspectives on users’ visual attention to brand posts on Instagram. The impact of visual attention on brand attitude and recognition is also explored. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a 4 (visual themes: customer-centric, employee-centric, product-centric and symbolic visuals) × 2 (view perspectives: first-person view vs third-person view) between-subject factorial eye-tracking experiment to explore their effects on viewers’ visual attention (fixation frequency and fixation duration), attitude toward the brand and brand recognition. Findings Results showed that, under a first-person view, participants spent the longest time viewing customer-centric images and paid the most attention to product-centric and customer-centric images. For images in the third-person view, product-centric images received the longest fixation duration and highest fixation frequency. Customer-centric image and product-centric image generated significantly higher amount of fixation duration and fixation frequency than the symbolic image, regardless of view perspective. Brand recognition was positively influenced by fixation frequency but not by fixation duration. Originality/value This study is an extended application of Aaker’s (1996) brand identity planning model in visual branding on Instagram. As the findings indicated, the effective use of visual strategies could lead to more positive responses toward the brand. By understanding how optical elements stimulate visual branding processing, marketing professionals will be able to improve information designing skills in visual-based social media platforms (such as Instagram).


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Gerber-Morón ◽  
Agnieszka Szarkowska ◽  
Bencie Woll

Understanding the way people watch subtitled films has become a central concern for subtitling researchers in recent years. Both subtitling scholars and professionals generally believe that in order to reduce cognitive load and enhance readability, line breaks in two-line subtitles should follow syntactic units. However, previous research has been inconclusive as to whether syntactic-based segmentation facilitates comprehension and reduces cognitive load. In this study, we assessed the impact of text segmentation on subtitle processing among different groups of viewers: hearing people with different mother tongues (English, Polish, and Spanish) and deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing people with English as a first language. We measured three indicators of cognitive load (difficulty, effort, and frustration) as well as comprehension and eye tracking variables.  Participants watched two video excerpts with syntactically and non-syntactically segmented subtitles. The aim was to determine whether syntactic-based text segmentation as well as the viewers’ linguistic background influence subtitle processing. Our findings show that non-syntactically segmented subtitles induced higher cognitive load, but they did not adversely affect comprehension. The results are discussed in the context of cognitive load, audiovisual translation, and deafness.


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