Analysis of brain activity and response to colour stimuli during learning tasks: an EEG study

Attention is activated when one or more sensory receptors return a sensation to the brain for the processing of information received. If we focus on the stimuli affecting attention, we have to consider some visual characteristic reinforcing or not the stimulus itself, such as size, intensity, colour, movement, position and contrast. All we know the attractive power of colours, and many studies have been done about the psychology of colours and their impact. Many experiments confirm that attention is reinforced when colours are used in educational material and during lessons, and several studies (Vuontela, 1999) showed that children remember colour cues better than verbal cues. Some studies also demonstrate that specific colours, such as blue, red, orange and yellow, stimulate brain activity, while others (violet, blue and green) induce relaxation. Additionally, other works show that observers can use colour as discriminant to select the appropriate set of visual stimuli, improving search performance (Egeth, Virzi & Garbart, 1984; Wolfe & Horowitz, 2004; Zhang & Luck, 2009).