Towards Understanding the Influence of Nature Imagery in User Interface Design: A Review of the Literature

Nature imagery is frequently employed as a design element to improve how users experience interactions with computerized artifacts such as websites and mobile apps. However, literature on the influence of such imagery on human perception and behavior is scant and highly fragmented. In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework that integrates the different pathways for how nature imagery embedded in user interface design may affect user perception and behavior. Building on this framework, we synthesize the results of existing literature on how humans perceive nature imagery and the potential cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses. By providing a concise overview of key theories and results of the extant literature, this study contributes to the knowledge base of (1) scholars who theorize on the impact of nature imagery on user perception and behavior and (2) systems designers who intend to utilize nature imagery in their user interfaces

The Effects of Landscape and Experience on the Navigation and Foraging Behaviour of Bumblebees, Bombus terrestris

Bumblebees live in an environment where the spatial distribution of foraging resources is always changing. In order to keep track of such changes, bumblebees employ a variety of different navigation and foraging strategies. Although a substantial amount of research has investigated the different navigation and foraging behaviours of bumblebees, much less is known of the effects that landscape features have on bumblebee behaviour. In this thesis, a series of experiments were conducted in order to investigate the role that landscape features have on the navigation and foraging behaviour of Bombus terrestris and whether individuals’ experience influences such behaviour. A hedgerow situated next to the colony was not found to significantly shape the flight paths or foraging choices of naïve bumblebees. Homing success was investigated and used as a proxy for foraging range in different environment types. Both the release distance and the type of environment were found to have a significant effect on the homing success of Bombus terrestris workers. Previous experience of the landscape was also found to significantly affect the time it took bumblebees to return to the colony (homing duration) as well as the likelihood of staying out overnight before returning to the colony. When focusing on the first five flights of a naïve bumblebee worker, experience was not found to significantly affect flight duration. Experience, however, significantly affected the weight of pollen foraged. The observed behaviour of bumblebee gynes provisioning their maternal colony with pollen was also investigated. The influx of pollen into the colony was found to affect this behaviour, suggesting that gynes will provision the maternal colony in response to its nutritional needs. The overall results are also discussed within the context of informing landscape management practices. The results presented in this thesis point to the critical role that factors such as the physical landscape and individual experience play in influencing bumblebee behaviour.South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Uni

Influence of personality traits on users’ viewing behaviour

Different views on the role of personal factors in moderating individual viewing behaviour exist. This study examined the impact of personality traits on individual viewing behaviour of facial stimulus. A total of 96 students (46 males and 50 females, age 23–28 years) were participated in this study. The Big-Five personality traits of all the participants together with data related to their eye-movements were collected and analysed. The results showed three groups of users who scored high on the personality traits of neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Individuals who scored high in a specific personality trait were more probably to interpret the visual image differently from individuals with other personality traits. To determine the extent to which a specific personality trait is associated with users’ viewing behaviour of visual stimulus, a predictive model was developed and validated. The prediction results showed that 96.73% of the identified personality traits can potentially be predicted by the viewing behaviour of users. The findings of this study can expand the current understanding of human personality and choice behaviour. The study also contributes to the perceptual encoding process of faces and the perceptual mechanism in the holistic face processing theory

THE INFLUENCE OF SPATIAL LATERAL BIASES AND NATIVE READING DIRECTION ON DRIVING AND AESTHETIC PREFERENCES

The neglect of leftward space occurring after a right parietal lesion, known as hemispatial neglect, results in a rightward spatial bias. Neurotypical individuals display an opposite leftward spatial bias, known as pseudoneglect (Bowers & Heilman, 1980). The leftward lighting bias and the leftward aesthetic preference are hypothesized to be related to pseudoneglect (Smith & Elias, 2018). Leftward biases are attenuated, or even flipped to the right in certain circumstances, notably in participants whose native reading direction (NRD) moves from right-to-left (RTL) and when spatial tasks occur in extrapersonal space. Aesthetic preferences and spatial abilities were compared between RTL and left-to-right (LTR) groups in an image rating task using eye tracking (Chapter 2) and image lighting tasks of three-dimensional (3D) images of sculptures (Chapter 3) and two-dimensional (2D) images of abstract paintings (Chapter 4). Participants’ basic spatial ability was assessed using the greyscales task (Mattingley, Bradshaw, Nettleton, & Bradshaw, 1994), a measure of perceptual asymmetries. LTR and RTL participants show clearly diverging trends of behaviour when making aesthetic judgments. When examining 2D images in Chapter 2 and illuminating 2D images in Chapter 4, preferences were leftward among LTRs and rightward among RTLs, however, both groups demonstrated a consistent leftward bias on the greyscales task. In Chapter 3, similar group differences between professionals in LTR and RTL regions were found for sculpture lighting, but participants illuminating 3D sculpture images did not show any light placement biases. In Chapter 4, a rudimentary version of a virtual mapping technique known as Halos (Baudisch & Rosenholtz, 2003) was carried out in a procedurally similar way to the artwork lighting task of the same chapter but measured spatial abilities rather than aesthetic preferences. Contrary to predictions, smaller errors were made when estimating the size of halos on the right, and as circle size increased estimation accuracy decreased. Studies in Chapter 5 examined navigation spatial abilities when driving, experimentally using a driving simulation, and through the analysis of naturalistic data from the Strategic Highway Research Program Naturalistic Driving Study (SHRP 2 NDS). Lane deviations were rightward, and collisions were more frequent and severe on the right side in the simulation and naturalistic data analysis revealed greater likelihoods of collisions from crossing over the right line or edge of the road and when making a right turn. Overall, findings suggest that an RTL NRD and task complexity modulate pseudoneglect and that lateral spatial biases when driving are in line with previous lateral bumping when walking results. Across all studies, findings provide clarity about the occurrence leftward bias attenuation

Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task

Extracting scene and object information from natural stimuli: the influence of scene structure and eye movements

When we observe a scene in our daily lives, our brains seemingly effortlessly extract various aspects of that scene. This can be attributed to different aspects of the human visual system, including but not limited to (1) its tuning to natural regularities in scenes and (2) its ability to bring different parts of the visual environment into focus via eye movements. While eye movements are a ubiquitous and natural behavior, they are considered undesirable in many highly controlled visual experiments. Participants are often instructed to fixate but cannot always suppress involuntary eye movements, which can challenge the interpretation of neuroscientific data, in particular for magneto- and electroencephalography (M/EEG). This dissertation addressed how scene structure and involuntary eye movements influence the extraction of scene and object information from natural stimuli. First, we investigated when and where real-world scene structure affects scene-selective cortical responses. Second, we investigated whether spatial structure facilitates the temporal analysis of a scene’s categorical content. Third, we investigated whether the spatial content of a scene aids in extracting task-relevant object information. Fourth, we explored whether the choice of fixation cross influences eye movements and the classification of natural images from EEG and eye tracking. The first project showed that spatial scene structure impacts scene-selective neural responses in OPA and PPA, revealing genuine sensitivity to spatial scene structure starting from 255 ms, while scene-selective neural responses are less sensitive to categorical scene structure. The second project demonstrated that spatial scene structure facilitates the extraction of the scene’s categorical content within 200 ms of vision. The third project showed that coherent scene structure facilitates the extraction of object information if the object is task-relevant, suggesting a task-based modulation. The fourth project showed that choosing a centrally presented bullseye instead of a standard fixation cross reduces eye movements on the single image level and subtly removes systematic eye movement related activity in M/EEG data. Taken together, the results advanced our understanding of (1) the impact of real-world structure on scene perception as well as the extraction of object information and (2) the influence of eye movements on advanced analysis methods.Wenn wir in unserem täglichen Leben eine Szene beobachten, extrahiert unser Gehirn scheinbar mühelos verschiedene Aspekte dieser Szene. Dies kann auf verschiedene Aspekte des menschlichen Sehsystems zurückgeführt werden, unter anderem auf (1) seine Ausrichtung auf natürliche Regelmäßigkeiten in Szenen und (2) seine Fähigkeit, verschiedene Teile der visuellen Umgebung durch Augenbewegungen in den Fokus zu bringen. Obwohl Augenbewegungen ein allgegenwärtiges und natürliches Verhalten sind, werden sie in vielen stark kontrollierten visuellen Experimenten als unerwünscht angesehen. Die Teilnehmer werden oft angewiesen, zu fixieren, können aber unwillkürliche Augenbewegungen nicht immer unterdrücken, was die Interpretation neurowissenschaftlicher Daten, insbesondere der Magneto- und Elektroenzephalographie (M/EEG), in Frage stellen kann. In dieser Dissertation wurde untersucht, wie Szenenstruktur und unbewusste Augenbewegungen die Extraktion von Szenen- und Objektinformationen aus natürlichen Stimuli beeinflussen. Zunächst untersuchten wir, wann und wo die Struktur einer realen Szene die szenenselektiven kortikalen Reaktionen beeinflusst. Zweitens untersuchten wir, ob die räumliche Struktur die zeitliche Analyse des kategorialen Inhalts einer Szene erleichtert. Drittens untersuchten wir, ob der räumliche Inhalt einer Szene bei der Extraktion aufgabenrelevanter Objektinformationen hilft. Viertens untersuchten wir, ob die Wahl des Fixationskreuzes die Augenbewegungen und die Klassifizierung natürlicher Bilder aus EEG und Eye-Tracking beeinflusst. Das erste Projekt zeigte, dass sich die räumliche Szenenstruktur auf szenenselektive neuronale Reaktionen in OPA und PPA auswirkt, wobei eine echte Empfindlichkeit für räumliche Szenenstrukturen ab 255 ms festgestellt wurde, während szenenselektive neuronale Reaktionen weniger empfindlich auf kategoriale Szenenstrukturen reagieren. Das zweite Projekt zeigte, dass die räumliche Szenenstruktur die Extraktion des kategorialen Inhalts der Szene innerhalb von 200 ms nach dem Sehen erleichtert. Das dritte Projekt zeigte, dass eine kohärente Szenenstruktur die Extraktion von Objektinformationen erleichtert, wenn das Objekt aufgabenrelevant ist, was auf eine aufgabenbezogene Modulation hindeutet. Das vierte Projekt zeigte, dass die Wahl eines zentral präsentierten Bullauges anstelle eines Standard-Fixationskreuzes Augenbewegungen auf Einzelbildebene reduziert und systematische Augenbewegungsaktivität in M/EEG-Daten auf subtile Weise beseitigt. Zusammengenommen haben die Ergebnisse unser Verständnis (1) der Auswirkungen der Struktur der realen Welt auf die Wahrnehmung der Szene und die Extraktion von Objektinformationen und (2) des Einflusses von Augenbewegungen auf fortgeschrittene Analysemethoden verbessert