Mindless Memorization Booster: A Method to Influence Memorization Power Using Attention Induction Phenomena Caused by Visual Interface Modulation and Its Application to Memorization Support for English Vocabulary Learning

Abstract

Memorization is necessary for various fields, such as language learning in the field of education. While memorization learning is often tedious and demotivating due to requiring conscious effort, few support approaches improve memorization unconsciously with low conscious effort. In this study, we propose a method, Mindless Memorization Booster, which improves users’ memorization unconsciously by visual stimuli of modulating the visual interface. This method is based on previous findings that the modulation of perceptual stimuli arouses attention/concentration. When the user looks at the memorization target, the proposed method presents a change in visual interface (e.g., changes in memorization target size, background color, and visual icon movement) to cause a psychological phenomenon of affecting the user’s attention and concentration, aiming at enhancing the memorization unconsciously. A prototype system of the proposed method was implemented for an English vocabulary memorization learning application. The evaluation results showed that the user’s memorization result was affected by the proposed method, and the speed of recall (i.e., outputs of the memorization word from the brain) increased by about 1 s per one memorization word without causing a negative affection on the number of correct answers for memorization. This result indicated the feasibility of the proposed method for memorization learning support. Our findings are helpful for designing visual information interfaces that consider the phenomena affecting the user’s memorization and promote memorization learning unconsciously.