Welcome to the Schloss Visual Reasoning Lab! We are part of the Department of Psychology and Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, Virtual Environments Group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.  Our lab aims to understand how people use visual reasoning for visual communication.  We study how people form associations between visual features (e.g., color, shape) and concepts, and how they use those associations to interpret meanings of visual features in information visualizations (e.g., graphs, maps, diagrams, signs). Our lab also investigates how to increase engagement in science through immersive experiences in scientific visualizations using virtual reality. Our work can be translated to making visual communication more effective and efficient.

Virtual Brain Demos Coming Soon!

VSS 2022 demo night lessons, including the Desktop versions and the touch system, are coming soon! Stay tuned!

Information Visualization

Color Brewer Blue

To interpret information visualizations, people must determine how perceptual features (e.g., color, shape, size, texture) map onto concepts. This process is easier when the encoded mapping between perceptual features and concepts in visualizations matches people’s expectations. The questions is, what determines people’s expectations? Answering this question will enable the design of visualizations that are easier to interpret.

Paper(s) on this topic
Kinateder, M. Warren, W. H., & Schloss, K. B. (in press). Exit sign color and exit choice. Applied Ergonomics.

Schloss, K. B., Gramazio, C. C., Silverman, A. T., Parker, M., L., and Wang, A. S. (in press) Mapping color to meaning in colormap data visualizations. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

Schloss, K. B., Lessard, L., Walmsley, C. S., & Foley, K. (2018). Color inference in visual communication: The meaning of colors in recycling. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 3, 5. PDF

Color Preference

Explaining Color Preferences
Blue WAVE
Why do people have color preferences? Why do color preferences differ between individuals and why do they change over time? Much of our research on answering these questions is motivated by the Ecological Valence Theory (EVT), which proposes that preference for a color is determined by preference for all objects and entities associated that color. We also evaluate other theories to test their ability to explain color preferences.

Color Preference Metrics
Dandelions Single
What are effective ways to describe patterns of color preferences? How can we predict people’s preferences for colors they haven’t judged? We are constructing and evaluating models built from color space dimensions in color spaces, which provide parsimonious descriptions of complex patterns of data.
Papers on this topic
Schloss, K. B., Lessard, L., Racey, C., & Hurlbert, A. C. (online 2017). Modeling color preferences using color space metrics. Vision Research. Link

Schloss, K. B. & Palmer, S.E. (2017). An ecological framework for temporal and individual differences in color preferences. Vision Research, 141, 95-108. Link

Schloss, K. B., & Heck, I. A. (2017). Seasonal changes in color preferences are linked to variations in environmental colors: A longitudinal study of fall, i-Perception, 8, 6, 1-19. PDF

Schloss, K. B., Nelson, R., Parker, L., Heck, I. A., & Palmer, S. E. (2017). Seasonal variations in color preference. Cognitive Science, 41, 6, 1589-1612. Link

Yokosawa, K., Schloss, K. B., Asano, M., & Palmer, S. E. (2016). Ecological Effects in Cross-Cultural Differences Between U.S. and Japanese Color Preferences, Cognitive Science, 40, 7, 1590-1616.Link

Schloss, K. B. (2015). Color preferences differ with variations in color perception. Trends in Cognitive Science, 19, 554-555. Link

Schloss, K. B., Hawthorne, D. & Palmer, S. E. (2015). Ecological influences of individual differences in color preferences. Attention, Perception and Psychophysics, 77, 2803-2816. Link

Strauss, E. D., Schloss, K. B., & Palmer, S. E. (2013). Color preferences change after experience with liked/disliked color objects. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 5, 935-943. Link

Taylor, C., Schloss, K. B., & Palmer, S. E., & Franklin, A. (2013). Color preferences in infants and adults are different. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 20, 5, 916-922. Link

Schloss, K. B., Poggesi, R. M., & Palmer, S. E. (2011). Effects of university affiliation and “school spirit” on color preferences: Berkeley vs. Stanford. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 498-504. PDF

Palmer, S. E. & Schloss, K. B. (2010). An ecological valence theory of color preferences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 8877-8882. PDF

VPCL joins Wisconsin Institute for Discovery

The Living Environments Laboratory in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery is pleased to announce the arrival of Dr. Karen Schloss and the Visual Perception and Cognition Lab. Dr. Schloss and her lab investigates how observers make predictions about objects and entities based on their cognitive and emotional responses to perceptual information. She joins University of Wisconsin in the Psychology Department.

Welcome

Welcome to the Schloss Visual Perception and Cognition Lab at the University of Wisconsin – Madison! We are part of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery – Living Environments Lab (LEL) theme and the Department of Psychology.
We investigate how observers make predictions about objects and entities based on their cognitive and emotional responses to perceptual information. We are currently focusing on how people’s associations with colors influence cognitive processing in three broad areas: (1) aesthetic response, (2) judgment and decision making, and (3) interpretation of information visualizations. In doing so, we take an empirical approach to design, with the goals of understanding how to communicate effectively through visualizations and what determines affective response to perceptual features. Although our main focus is on color, we are also interested in perceptual organization and spatial layout. We also investigate more traditional topics in visual perception, including how perceptual organization influences illusions of size, shape, and motion. See our Research page for further details about ongoing projects in the lab.