ERP Evidence for the Effects of Anthropomorphic Icons on Attention and Perceptual Decision Making

Abstract

Prior neuro ergonomic studies have shown that anthropomorphic app icons produce a more attractive attention effect. In this study, we investigate whether the attention effect of anthropomorphic icons influences the perceptual decision making process and whether the behavior performance changes with different cue durations. The attentional effects of anthropomorphic icons elicited larger N250 amplitudes. For the time course of attention effect, the results showed that the response time in the 500 ms stimulus duration is significantly faster than 250 ms. The speed of information accumulation explains the attention effects of anthropomorphic icons, as in the anthropomorphic icon cues, increased N250 amplitude was only associated with higher drift rates. These results contribute to research on the spatial attention effect of anthropomorphic icons and can be demonstrated by N250 amplitude and information accumulation speed.

Keywords:

• Anthropomorphism
• icon design
• perceptual decision making
• diffusion drift model

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Dini Duan

Dini Duan is a doctoral student at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University. Her main research interests include information visualization and human-computer interaction design.

Yanfei Zhu

Yanfei Zhu is a doctoral student at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University. She now focuses on information visualization design.

Dihui Chu

Dihui Chu is a graduate student at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University. His main research interests are visualization interface design and intelligent driving interaction.

Wenyu Wu

Wenyu Wu is a lecturer and graduate supervisor at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University. His main research fields are human-computer interaction and industrial product design.