How Well do Visual Verbs Work in Daily Communication for Young and Old Adults

Summary:

A couple of students from Princeton created a method by which to study the ways that visual verbs work for young and old adults. They consider young adults to be 20 to 39 years old, while old adults are considered 55 years old and up. They are trying to study how visual verbs can be displayed differently and how the meaning is effected in the two age groups. They have four different visualization methods:

• Single static image
• Panel of four static images
• Animation
• Video clip

Pictured above is the example they give for the four visual models for "work". The researchers wanted to make it known that verbs are more difficult to visualize than nouns because nouns typically represent a tangible thing. To collect a sample of verbs, they found 48 frequently used verbs from the British National Corpus. They got all of their images (for the single image and the panel of images) from web pages which had been tagged. To select the best images, the researchers got people to rate a sample of images. They then selected the four top-rated images for the panel. They got their animations from a website for visualization, and they conducting the video making themselves.

The study showed that there was a significant aging effect on interpreting visualizations. The young adults scored higher on average in all four methods of visualization. The score was on a 6 point scale (an exact match was worth 6, synonym was worth 5...). They came up with a collection of results from the experiment:

• Multiple pictures are better for conveying verbs
• Utilize common gestures, but be wary of cultural differences
• Use symbols carefully, especially when ambiguous
• Simplify backgrounds and use common scenes
• Use special effects carefully because elderly might not understand
• Consider age-related effects

Comments:

I think that, like most research in the CHI papers, the experiment was pretty interesting. I did not really catch onto the application of the research though. In their conclusion, they mention that visual communication is helpful in multilingual settings - I would agree with this. They assert that "verbs must be well illustrated in visual languages...as an essential part to most languages". This part I find hard to agree with - where is the application?