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Understanding brain activity linked to built environment exposure is important, as it may affect underlying cognitive, perceptual, and emotional processes, which have a critical influence in our daily life. As our time spent inside buildings is rising, and mental health problems have become more prevalent, it is important we investigate how design characteristics of the built environment impact brain function. In this study, we utilized electroencephalography to understand whether the design elements of scale and color of interior built environments modulate functional brain connectivity (i.e., brain network communication). Using a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, while controlling indoor environmental quality responsible for physiological comfort, healthy adult participants aged 18–55 years (66 for scale, subset of 18 for color), were exposed to context‐neutral indoor room scenes presented for two‐minutes each. Our results show that both enlarging and reducing scale enhanced theta connectivity across the left temporoparietal region and right frontal region. We also found when reducing the built environment scale, there was a network exhibiting greater high‐gamma connectivity, over the right frontoparietal region. For color, the condition (blue) contrasted to our achromatic control (white) increased theta connectivity in the frontal hemispheres. These findings identify a link between theta and gamma oscillations during exposure to the scale and color of the built environment, showing that design characteristics of the built environment could affect our cognitive processes and mental health. This suggests that, through the design of buildings, we may be able to mediate performance and health outcomes, which could lead to major health and economic benefits for society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many interpersonal cognitions and behaviors, such as impression formation, communication, and cooperation, are controlled and performed while surrounded by the built environment. This study reviewed over 20 years of literature on the influence of visual environmental factors, particularly brightness, color, and depth, on interpersonal cognition and behavior. Twelve articles on brightness were extracted, showing that the effects of brightness varied significantly depending on individual characteristics, interpersonal relationships, and interactional situations. Thirteen articles on color revealed that various factors such as age, gender, and interpersonal relationships are involved in the influence process. Eight articles that examined influences from depth (spaciousness and height) indicated that influences from depth are a highly complex process. Finally, the study has shown areas for further research, challenges to be overcome, and prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linguistic input children receive across early childhood plays a crucial role in shaping their knowledge about the world. To study this input, researchers have begun applying distributional semantic models to large corpora of child‐directed speech, extracting various patterns of word use/co‐occurrence. Previous work using these models has not measured how these patterns may change throughout development, however. In this work, we leverage natural language processing methods—originally developed to study historical language change—to compare caregivers' use of words when talking to younger versus older children. Some words' usage changed more than others; this variability could be predicted based on the word's properties at both the individual and category levels. These findings suggest that caregivers' changing patterns of word use may play a role in scaffolding children's acquisition of conceptual structure in early development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims: Before COVID‐19 was declared a global pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and many other organizations published many images of its pathogen (namely SARS‐CoV‐2) to raise public awareness of the disease. Despite their scientific and aesthetic values, such images may convey metaphoric meanings and cause a subsequent impact on viewers' fear and disgust. This study investigated how exposure to the SARS‐CoV‐2 images might shape viewers' fear, disgust, and risk perception of COVID‐19. Methods: Seventy images depicting the SARS‐CoV‐2 were collected from the websites of CDC, NIAID, and third‐party organizations in early 2020. We first showed the images to a group of 492 adults recruited from the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and asked them to rate their levels of fear and disgust for each image. Results of this pre‐test allowed us to identify images that evoked high, medium, and low levels of fear and disgust, which were then used as treatment stimuli for an online experiment with a national sample of 500 U.S. adults. Results: Exposure to the selected SARS‐CoV‐2 images caused different levels of disgust, but not fear, among the members of the national sample. Noticeably, the images evoking the highest level of disgust backfired among those who were least concerned about COVID and caused less fear than images evoking the lowest level of disgust. Image exposure was not associated with risk perception of the disease. Conclusion: This study found that the seemingly objective visualizations of the SARS‐CoV‐2 are not emotionally neutral. Scientists, agencies, and media professionals should be mindful of the potential emotional impact of science visualizations, such as when creating the iconic image for COVID‐19 or other infectious diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photos are becoming more spread with digital age. Cameras, smart phones and Internet provide large dataset of images available to a wide audience. Assessing memorability of these photos is becoming a challenging task. Besides, finding the best representative model for memorable images will enable memorability prediction. The authors develop a new approach‐based rule of photography to evaluate image memorability. In fact, they use three groups of features: image basic features, layout features and image composition features. In addition, they introduce a diversified panel of classifiers based on some data mining techniques used for memorability analysis. They experiment their proposed approach and they compare its results to the state‐of‐the‐art approaches dealing with image memorability. Their approach experiment's results prove that models used in their approach are encouraging predictors for image memorability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Affective computing research has advanced emotion recognition systems using facial expressions, voices, gaits, and physiological signals, yet these methods are often impractical. This study integrates mouse cursor motion analysis into affective computing and investigates the idea that movements of the computer cursor can provide information about emotion of the computer user. We extracted 16–26 trajectory features during a choice‐reaching task and examined the link between emotion and cursor motions. Participants were induced for positive or negative emotions by music, film clips, or emotional pictures, and they indicated their emotions with questionnaires. Our 10‐fold cross‐validation analysis shows that statistical models formed from “known” participants (training data) could predict nearly 10%–20% of the variance of positive affect and attentiveness ratings of “unknown” participants, suggesting that cursor movement patterns such as the area under curve and direction change help infer emotions of computer users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research considers how tobacco warnings, plain packaging, and interactions between these measures affect behavioral intentions. While existing literature shows the superiority of pictorial warning labels (PWLs) vs. text‐only tobacco warnings, few studies have examined the interaction effects of warnings and plain packaging on smoking intentions. Nor has earlier work examined the influence of smoking status (smoker vs. non‐smoker) on both warning and plain packaging effectiveness. Our experimental study addressed this gap by surveying 338 individuals using a factorial design with two manipulated factors (PWLs vs. text‐only warnings; plain pack vs. current branded tobacco pack). Results show that the plain pack and warnings work independently and in unison to influence smokers' and non‐smokers' behavioral intentions. The findings are particularly relevant to the many countries currently considering plain packaging and facing opposition from tobacco companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated cultural differences between U.S. and Japanese color preferences and the ecological factors that might influence them. Japanese and U.S. color preferences have both similarities (e.g., peaks around blue, troughs around dark-yellow, and preferences for saturated colors) and differences (Japanese participants like darker colors less than U.S. participants do). Complex gender differences were also evident that did not conform to previously reported effects. Palmer and Schloss's (2010) weighted affective valence estimate (WAVE) procedure was used to test the Ecological Valence Theory's (EVT's) prediction that within-culture WAVE-preference correlations should be higher than between-culture WAVE-preference correlations. The results supported several, but not all, predictions. In the second experiment, we tested color preferences of Japanese-U.S. multicultural participants who could read and speak both Japanese and English. Multicultural color preferences were intermediate between U.S. and Japanese preferences, consistent with the hypothesis that culturally specific personal experiences during one's lifetime influence color preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of hueing dye on the fabric b* value and CIE whiteness during home laundry was investigated using crystal violet dye to study the accumulation mechanism on fabric samples. Fabrics treated with the crystal violet dye had a lower b* value and a higher CIE whiteness. The dye accumulation was much higher on nylon or nylon/lycra blends than on cotton and polyester fabrics. The fabric surface charge and surface energy were also studied, and the dye-fiber interaction was investigated based on fiber and dye molecular structure. The study indicates: (1) the electrostatic adsorption is the main contributor to the deposition and accumulation of hueing dyes on fabrics; (2) fabric surface energy may play an important role in the dye-fiber interaction. The more hydrophobic the fiber surface, the less dye accumulates on the fabric during home laundry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basal ganglia have traditionally been viewed as motor processing nuclei; however, functional neuroimaging evidence has implicated these structures in more complex cognitive and affective processes that are fundamental for a range of human activities. Using quantitative meta-analysis methods we assessed the functional subdivisions of basal ganglia nuclei in relation to motor (body and eye movements), cognitive (working-memory and executive), affective (emotion and reward) and somatosensory functions in healthy participants. We document affective processes in the anterior parts of the caudate head with the most overlap within the left hemisphere. Cognitive processes showed the most widespread response, whereas motor processes occupied more central structures. On the basis of these demonstrated functional roles of the basal ganglia, we provide a new comprehensive topographical model of these nuclei and insight into how they are linked to a wide range of behaviors. Hum Brain Mapp 34:3031-3054, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]