Games with Hypotheses: Color, Text and Texture

An online memory matching game is used to explore the collective performance for stimulus sets varying in color, text and texture. The game is a consistent five wide by four high array of 70 by 70 pixels squares for a total of eleven unique test pairs. Users click squares to find matching pairs and once all of the pairs have been found the time to complete and number of clicks to complete are saved on a server. For the initial draft of this paper eleven images sets were tested. In three cases the test pairs were solid colors and corresponded to a basic color set and two non-basic color sets. In four cases the test pairs were the text corresponding to color terms. The text cases included black 12 pixel Arial for the basic color terms and two test cases for the non-basic color terms used previously. The text cases also included a set with Stroop colored basic color terms or text colored roughly the opposite to the corresponding color term. Finally, four texture image sets taken from the Outex texture database were used for testing. Two of the texture sets were for higher key, mostly white textures sets of wallpaper and flour. Two of the texture sets were for more colorful images of textiles and floors. The analysis is presented for a webbased experimental game based on the completion time and number of clicks to completion. The use of single simple game unifies each of these perception and memory tasks. Introduction The use of the web for conducting color experiments has been previously described. This paper extends this work in several ways. First a game is used as the primary interface to web volunteers and the responses to be analyzed are the collective performance. Second the game is simple enough that it can be used to consider multiple, interrelated domains such as solid colored patches, texture and written color terms. There is a range of related current work on the use of games for either research or engineering purposes. Applications of labeling games for machine learning have been shown by multiple authors. The use of action videos games has been proposed to enhance the contrast sensitivity function of participants. Largescale analysis of chess playing has been performed to explore rapid human decision making. The game of concentration has also previously been used to assess the visuospatial memory of children and monkeys. Our contribution is on a web-scale version of the game of concentration, focused on perceptual stimuli sets with the potential to generalize to other specific hypotheses within a consistent and familiar framework. The game is also simple enough that it can be modeled in its ideal form, for example for an ideal participant with perfect memory or a completely random player. The fundamental hypothesis is that collecting web-scale user data for the game of concentration based on widely different stimuli sets can yield statistically significant differences in performance across stimuli. This in turns implies the possibility of a univariate scaling of differences between sets of stimuli using a game interface. Therefore the focus of this paper is on use of a web-scale game not for labeling, therapeutic benefits or analysis but for testing of specific hypotheses. Experiment The experimental game used was the concentration game, also known as pairs, shinkei-suijaku, hūsker dū or the memory game. The game consists of a five wide by four high array of square patches. The squares were all 70 by 70 pixels with gaps between each of the patches. Upon loading the web page the experiment would be initialized with one of eleven sets of experimental patches. Initially the user sees the instructions and all of the patches as a gray patch with a single pixel black border. Below the patches is a button that must be pressed to start the game. Once the button is pressed the button becomes a timer displaying the minutes and seconds taken. Figure 1.A and 1.B shows a screen shot of the initial view of the experiment and the game underway. The objective of the participant is to find matching pairs on the reverse side of the patches. The participant can examine the patches two at a time and once a pair matches they stay visible. Selected pairs remain visible as long as no new sample has been selected. The goal is to complete the matching process as quickly as possible. Figure 1.A. Screen shot of the central portion of the experimental color concentration game at the beginning of play. 36 © 2012 Society for Imaging Science and Technology Figure 1.B. Screen shot of the central portion of the experimental color concentration game after 38 seconds of play and four matched pairs have been