A Pre-study of Background Color Effects on the Working Memory Area of the Brain

Abstract

Many studies have suggested that the design of the tablet screen could give an effect to the tablet users' performance. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of screen background colors on the brain functions for elderly and young people when they are performing a task on a tablet computer. Twenty university students and 10 elderly people were recruited for participating in the experiment. The subjects were told to count the number of circles on a five different background colors, which are white, blue, yellow, red, and green randomly. This step was done in a short period of time. The average percentages of correct answers for the circle counting tasks that the subjects performed were higher with all background colors for both young and elderly people compared to the white background color. The results indicate that white color may not be the best choice for a background color of a tablet screen for best performance and attention for both young and elderly people.