Do Background Colors Have an Impact on Preferences and Catch the Attention of Users?

In recent years, our environment has become more invasive and stimulating than ever. People must choose carefully what to look for in their over-stimulated daily lives. One way to attract visual attention, which may even interrupt the cognitive task being performed, is color. However, a question arises: Does each color attract the attention of users in a similar way? In this paper, we attempt to answer this question. Our goal is to investigate whether there are colors that have a greater visual power than other colors and, thus, can capture the attention of users more strongly, independent of the background (e.g., color or image). We also discuss which mode of visual attention (divided or sustained) is particularly susceptible to such visual messages. For this purpose, a perceptual experiment was developed, in which user preferences concerning user-friendly and readable color compositions were acquired. At the same time, we measured the unconscious reactions of users related to their first impression, thus indicating the color composition which first (from a displayed pair of images) draws the attention of users. Reactions were measured using an eye tracker. As a result of this research, we found that the background color, in the case of some colors, does not have a significant impact on the perception of the visual message, even if it is intended to attract and maintain the attention of the user.

Effect of Geospatial Uncertainty Borderization on Users’ Heuristic Reasoning

A set of mental strategies called "heuristics" – logical shortcuts that we use to make decisions under uncertainty – has become the subject of a growing number of studies. However, the process of heuristic reasoning about uncertain geospatial data remains relatively under-researched. With this study, we explored the relation between heuristics-driven decision-making and the visualization of geospatial data in states of uncertainty, with a specific focus on the visualization of borders, here termed "borderization". Therefore, we tested a set of cartographic techniques to visualize the boundaries of two types of natural hazards across a series of maps through a user survey. Respondents were asked to assess the safety and desirability of several housing locations potentially affected by air pollution or avalanches. Maps in the survey varied by "borderization" method, background color and type of information about uncertain data (e.g., extrinsic vs. intrinsic). Survey results, analyzed using a mixed quantitative-qualitative approach, confirmed previous suggestions that heuristics play a significant role in affecting users' map experience, and subsequent decision-making.

Impact of the packaging of plain soymilk on the intention to purchase of the consumer

The objective of this work was to evaluate the intention to purchase plain soymilk by correlating it with packaging characteristics through the conjoint analysis. Survey of attributes occurred by focus group (41 participants) and five samples of Brazilian original soymilk. Main attributes that interfered in the purchase decision: brand, presence of nutritional appeal, type of illustration of glass containing beverage and background color. Attributes were combined to generate eight packaging proposals, evaluated by 86 participants. SAS was used for data analysis, 85 of which were consistent. Participants were grouped by similarities/dissimilarities in three groups: G1 (48 participants), G2 (31) and G3 (6). G1 preferred packaging containing nutritional appeal and light background, being influenced by the brand. G2 opted for packaging containing nutritional appeal, lesser-known brand and filled glass. G3 preferred the presence of nutritional appeal, lesser known brand, full glass and dark background. Presence of nutritional appeal is the factor that most impacts the purchase decision, but the brand, type of glass illustration and background color are relevant. Packaging with the presence of nutritional appeal, glass with full filling and clear background is more likely to be of interest to consumers.

Semiotic Analysis of Dove’s Femvertising

This qualitative study aimed to know in what ways the verbal (oral mode) and non-verbal (visual mode and gestural mode) semiotic resources help Dove meet the criteria of femvertising. The study used the Multimodal approach to help analyze the data. The writer collected and analyzed the data from Dove’s My Beauty My Say video. The findings showed that the verbal semiotic resources help Dove meet the criteria of femvertising by orally informing the audiences about the problems and arguments that are faced by the women in the video and how they responded to the problems in order to empower all the women. Meanwhile, the non-verbal semiotic resources help Dove meet the criteria of femvertising by revealing women in the authentic form and outside of traditional gender stereotypes so that they can deliver predominantly pro-female messages that can empower themselves and other women who are facing the similar problems as they do. The non-verbal semiotic resources are delivered by using the gestures (e.g. facial expression and body language) and objects (e.g. outfits, dominated background color, focus of the camera) in the video. In conclusion, I observe these semiotic resources are important to help Dove meet the criteria of femvertising. Keywords: Femvertising, Multimodal, Verbal semiotic resources, Non-verbal semiotic resources

Dermatoscopic Findings in Palmoplantar Dermatoses

Dermatoscopy is a useful, non-invasive method in the diagnosis of various dermatological diseases. Dermatoscopy of non-pigmented skin lesions shows additional morphologic features, such as cutaneous vascular pattern, scale color and scale distribution pattern, and background color. Dermatoscopy can be useful tool in differential diagnosis in palmoplantar dermatoses. The most specific dermatoscopic features of hand eczema include yellowish-orange globules, yellowish scales and yellowish crusts. Light red background color, regular vascular distribution pattern, dotted vessels and white scale color have been reported in previous studies as dermatoscopic features of palmoplantar psoriasis. Dotted vessels can be seen in various dermatoses, such as psoriasis, eczema, lichen planus, porokeratosis and keratodermas. The distribution pattern and color of the scales are also important in the differential diagnosis of palmoplantar dermatoses. Previous studies have shown that scales are mainly localized in skin furrows in patients with tinea manum. Patchy distributed, homogeneous, structureless, orange areas were reported in palmar keratoderma due to pityriasis rubra pilaris. Amber scales, white-to-pinkish background; sparse whitish scales were reported in palmar keratoderma due to mycosis fungoides. Dermatoscopical findings of palmoplantar area can help in the differential diagnosis of various dermatoses.

Does background color affect moral judgment? A registered replication report of Zarkadi and Schnall’s (2013) Study 1

Do colored backgrounds lead to polarized judgments? Zarkadi and Schnall (2013) found in their Study 1 that, indeed, exposing participants to a black-and-white (versus other colored) background polarized participants’ judgments in a moral dilemma task. This study supported a moral intuitionist model of moral judgment and lent further support to so-called Conceptual Metaphor Theories (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999).After a large pilot study (n = 12,322) that failed to replicate this effect, we conducted two strict preregistered replications relying on Bayesian sequential analyses. First study ran on a French-speaking sample (min N = 300, max N = 450) indicated that our data supports the [presence/absence] of an effect and/while data from the second study ran on an English-speaking sample (min N = 300, max N = 450) [also/while] [does not support/supports] the presence/absence of an effect. This research [confirms/failed to confirm] the effect of the background color on a moral dilemma evaluation and indicates that color may [not be/be determinative] in moral judgement formations. [There is thus strong evidence for the link between polarized color and judgments/There is therefore no evidence for the effect and we think that this line of research is a dead end].

The effectiveness of eyespots and masquerade in protecting artificial prey across ontogenetic and seasonal shifts

When constraints on antipredator coloration shift over the course of development, it can be advantageous for animals to adopt different color strategies for each life stage. Many caterpillars in the genus Papilio exhibit unique ontogenetic color sequences: e.g., early instars that masquerade as bird feces, with later instars possessing eyespots. I hypothesize that larvae abandon feces masquerade in lieu of eyespots due to ontogenetic changes in signaler size. This ontogenetic pattern also occurs within broader seasonal shifts in background color and predator activity. I conducted predation experiments with artificial prey to determine how potential signaling constraints (specifically size and season) shape predation risk, and consequently the expression of ontogenetic color change in Papilio larvae. Seasonally, both predation and background greenness declined significantly from July to September, though there was little evidence that these patterns impacted the effectiveness of either color strategy. Caterpillar size and color strongly affected the attack rate of avian predators: attacks increased with prey size regardless of color, and eyespotted prey were attacked more than masquerading prey overall. These results may reflect a key size-mediated tradeoff between conspicuousness and intimidation in eyespotted prey, and raise questions about how interwoven aspects of behavior and signal environment might maintain the prevalence of large, eyespotted larvae in nature.