Abstract
The study of reading memory mainly focuses on the language, cognitive and metacognitive skills that people must master, by which people are able to read and study. Little attention has been paid to how words themselves, the perceptual characteristics of words, affect comprehension and memory. In the research, perceptual characteristics were controlled by providing Chinese vocabulary in four different font sizes and two font colors which are experimented in 10 participants. The font sizes were 16pt, 20pt, 28pt, and 40pt; the font colors were red and black, respectively. Experiments were made to compare and measure the two aspects influence on human memory and efficiency balance. The experimental results showed that font size increasing was more effective in increasing memory scores than color-changing. In particular, compared with red words in 16pt, words in black of 40pt significantly increased the memory score. However, there was no significant difference in memory score between 20pt and 28pt black words. According to the experimental results and post-experiment interview, the results were discussed at the end of this paper.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
The Guide to Public Signage Design. http://lugang.chcg.gov.tw/Codes/Upload/Files/公共標示符碼.pdf. Accessed 15 Jan 2020
Tulving, E.: Episodic and semantic memory. Organ. Mem. 1, 381–403 (1972)
Dzulkifli, M.A., Mustafar, M.F.: The influence of colour on memory performance: a review. Malays. J. Med. Sci. MJMS 20(2), 3 (2013)
Wu, Y., Yang, X., Yang, Y.: Importance conveyed in different ways: effects of hierarchy and focus. J. Neurol. 47, 37–49 (2018)
Louis, A., et al.: Discourse indicators for content selection in summarization (2010)
Sternberg, R.J.: Cognitive Psychology, 5th edn. Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Belmont (2009)
James, W.: The Principles of Psychology. Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York (1890)
Titchener, E.: Lectures on the elementary psychology of feeling and attention (1908)
Halamish, V., Nachman, H., Katzir, T.: The effect of font size on children’s memory and metamemory. Front. Psychol. 9, 1577 (2018)
Wang, X., Wang, Z., Li, H., Zhou, W.: An eye-movement study on text font size design rules in the digital learning resources (2017)
Rhodes, M.G., Castel, A.D.: Memory predictions are influenced by perceptual information: evidence for metacognitive illusions. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 137, 615–625 (2008)
Farley, F.H., Grant, A.P.: Arousal and cognition: memory for color versus black and white multimedia presentation. J. Psychol. 94(1), 147–150 (1976)
Birren, F.: Color Psychology and Color Therapy. McGraw-Hill, New York (1950)
Greene, T.C., Bell, P.A., Boyer, W.N.: Coloring the environment: hue, arousal, and boredom. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 21, 253–254 (1983)
Morton, J.: Why color matters (2010)
Moore, R.S., Stammerjohan, C.A., Coulter, R.A.: Banner advertiser-web site context congruity and color effects on attention and attitudes. J. Advert. 34(2), 71–84 (2005)
White, J.V.: Strathmoor Press, State of Ohio (1997)
Ludlow, A.K., Wilkins, A.J.: Case report: color as a therapeutic intervention. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 39(5), 815–818 (2009)
De Giorgio, A.: Enhancing motor learning of young soccer players through preventing an internal focus of attention: the effect of shoes colour. PLoS ONE 13(8), e0200689 (2018)
Yeari, M., Oudega, M., van den Broek, P.: The effect of highlighting on processing and memory of central and peripheral text information: evidence from eye movements. J. Res. Read. 40(4), 365–383 (2016)
Haynes, E.: The effect of text color and text grouping on attention and short-term recall memory (2017)
McConnohie, B.V.: A study of the effect of color in memory retention when used in presentation software (1999)
Dzulkifli, M.A., Mustafar, M.F.: The influence of colour on memory performance: a review. Malays. J. Med. Sci. MJMS 20(2), 3 (2012)
Wang, H.-W.: The impact of color on short term memory of english letters (2017)
Allred, S.R., Olkkonen, M.: The effect of memory and context changes on color matches to real objects. Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 77(5), 1608–1624 (2015)
Word List with Accumulated Word Frequency in Sinica Corpus. http://words.sinica.edu.tw/sou/sou.html. Accessed 17 Oct 2019
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Fu, TW., Peng, JW. (2020). The Effect and the Efficiency Balance of Font Size and Font Color Change on the Human Memory in Chinese Vocabulary. In: Harris, D., Li, WC. (eds) Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics. Mental Workload, Human Physiology, and Human Energy. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12186. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49044-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49044-7_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-49043-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-49044-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)