Familiar Shape Research Articles

Functions of two variables applied to indigenous graphics

The aim of this work is to mathematically represent geometric figures that refer to the indigenous graphics of the Kariri-Xocó people. To do this, we will use the concept of functions with two variables, studied in Calculus III of the Curso de Licenciatura Intercultural Indígena em Matemática at Universidade Estadual de Alagoas. This connection is made based on body paintings that have familiar geometric shapes, which can be seen through the level surfaces of functions with two variables. One of the functions used is the exponential, while the other is made up of the sum of sine and cosine. In addition to this aspect of calculus teaching applied to indigenous culture, the results of this study motivate the development of research on the subject, contributing to the production of works that disseminate indigenous culture in Brazil and around the world.

Familiarity Effect in the Perception of Handwriting: Evaluating in-group/out-group effect among readers of the Latin script

There is much evidence that familiarity can affect perception of stimuli, with items that are familiar to the individual being preferred and better remembered. Previous research has also shown that familiarity with a typeface increases preference for it, but no studies have evaluated the impact of familiarity in relation to the affect towards handwritten text. For the present study, a two-part experiment (N = 422) was designed to measure how contemporary users of the Latin script perceive handwritten text. The first section was designed to collect specimens of the participants’ handwriting. The second, which was adapted to each participant’s handwriting style, measured implicit judgments of certain familiar letter shapes against unfamiliar ones. Results show that familiarity positively influences the extent to which one judges the friendliness and trustworthiness of handwritten text. Furthermore, the greater the similarity to how one writes a letterform, the greater the observed effect in terms of perceived friendliness. These findings suggest that people have an implicit bias towards handwriting that looks like their own.

The roles of symmetry and elongation in developing reference frames.

Previous studies showed that elongation and symmetry (two ubiquitous aspects of natural stimuli) are important attributes in object perception and recognition, which in turn suggests that these geometrical factors may contribute to the selection of perceptual reference-frames. However, whether and how these attributes guide the selection of reference-frames is still poorly understood. The goal of this study was to examine systematically the roles of elongation and symmetry, as well as their combination, in the selection of reference axis and how these axes are developed for unfamiliar objects. We designed our experiments to eliminate two potential confounding factors: (i) extraneous environmental cues, such as edges of the screen, etc. (by using VR) and (ii) pre-learned cues for familiar objects and shapes (by using reinforcement learning of novel shapes). We used algorithmically generated textures with different orientations having specified levels of symmetry and elongation as the stimuli. In each trial, we presented only one stimulus and asked observers to report if the stimulus was in its original form or a flipped (mirror-image) one. Feedback was provided at the end of each trial. Based on previous studies on mental rotation, we hypothesized that the selection of a reference-frame defined by symmetry and/or elongation would be revealed by a linear relationship between reaction-times and the angular-deviation from either the most symmetrical or the most elongated orientation. Our results are consistent with this hypothesis. We found that subjects performed mental rotation to transform images to their reference axes and used the most symmetrical or elongated orientation as the reference axis when only one factor was presented, and they used a "winner-take-all" strategy when both factors were presented, with elongation being more dominant than symmetry. We discuss theoretical implications of these findings, in particular in the context of "canonical sensorimotor theory."

Decadent Dinosaurs: Directed Evolution in British and North American Literature, 1890s–1970s

Despite paying concerted attention to evolutionary mechanisms, literary scholars have rarely focused on forms of “directed evolution” like orthogenesis (evolution along a linear track) and phylogeronty—the parallel between the lifespan of an animal group and the lifespan of an aging individual—analogical concepts reflecting a paleontological manifestation of a wider interest in human decadence. This essay analyzes how these concepts are explored in three areas: popular adventure fiction, social reform novels by Marie Stopes and H. G. Wells, and writings by paleontologists. Across these texts, the essay argues that directed evolution offered a recognizable trajectory with which to render the complexity and strangeness of prehistoric and modern life alike into a familiar linear shape by reading certain extinct animals as moral exemplars of evolutionary failure. While reformers hoped that humans could escape the orthogenetic grooves confining nonhuman animals to extinction, this optimism was shadowed both with fears that humans might inevitably face decadence and with a sense that survival meant mediocrity.

Motion-induced distortion of shape.

Motion, position, and form are intricately intertwined in perception. Motion distorts visual space, resulting in illusory position shifts such as flash-drag and flash-grab effects. The flash-grab displaces a test by up to several times its size. This lets us use it to investigate where the motion-induced shift operates in the processing stream from photoreceptor activation to feature activation to object recognition. We present several canonical, highly familiar forms and ask whether the motion-induced shift operates uniformly across the form. If it did, we could conclude that the effect occurred after the elements of the form are bound. However, we find that motion-induced distortion affects not only the position, but also the appearance of briefly presented, canonical shapes (square, circle, and letter T). Features of the flashed target that were closest to its center were shifted in the direction of motion more than those further from its center. Outline shapes were affected more than filled shapes, and the strength of the distortion increased with the contrast of the moving background. This not only supports a nonuniform spatial profile for the motion-induced shift but also indicates that the shift operates before the shape is established, even for highly familiar shapes like squares, circles, and letters.

Geometry and Jean Genet: Shaping the Subject. By Joanne Brueton

This capstone in Joanne Brueton’s impressive assessment of Jean Genet demonstrates her increasing fluency in her own voice, writing on modern philosophy oriented in Western European social thought. Her comparative historical method of literary analysis contextualizes Genet’s œuvre within the connected histories of metropolitan French and decolonial social thought on subjectivity. Embedded translations and extensive bibliographies assist readers in following a complex analysis. Brueton vividly renders the perforated points, lines, and grids of Genet’s novels in living, and loving, colour. Genet’s use of the language of geometry ‘to figure a mobile cartography of selfhood that inscribes the very border it uproots’ (p. 3) allows Brueton to ask a central question: under what philosophical circumstances is it useful to measure individuality like a geometer does the earth? What emerges is Genet’s anti-identitarian epistemology and spatial map of subjectivity. Brueton traces the point and circle (arpenteur) as poetics that give richer meaning to the familiar shapes of Western European literary subjectivities, such as the punctum (Barthes), rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari), stigmata (Cixous), labyrinth (Derrida, Nancy), panopticon (Foucault), and fils or ties (Sartre, Nancy). Chapter 1 is fundamental to her broader argument, where ‘the point and arpenteur’ lay the groundwork for the restless elaboration throughout the book on the question-and-answer sequence of ‘What is the point?’ and ‘The point is…’. Chapters 2 to 4 explore the other three concepts energizing Genet’s geometric toolkit: vectors (lines), obliques (lines), and grids (planes). Genet’s geometric method explains how the ‘perforated relation in which individuals reach out as lone points in a shared separation’ (p. 29) entangles wounding and writing across metropole and colony. These social processes traditionally tiptoe around violence embedded in language and culture. In Chapter 3, there is a refreshing consideration of the geopolitics of cultural studies. Digging in the dark of literary criticism from the Global South, Brueton situates Genet within Walter Benjamin and Sara Ahmed’s discussions on obliquity and transversality. This permits a reading of Genet that legitimizes him as a politicized French dissident. Genet belongs to more than the classical French canon, which emphasizes being over becoming; instead, he waltzes to the rhythm of social-theoretical canons developed from the subjectivity of Western European colonies. Readers looking for a broader interpretation of French language and culture, inclusive of French colonial subjectivities and their shapeshifting politics, should look elsewhere. Aimé Césaire is discussed as a fellow poet and philosopher offering insights on mathematical renderings of human consciousness, but only briefly in the Introduction. Édouard Glissant and poets from the Négritude movement are silently bypassed in obliquity, while Black Panthers and Palestinians are narrowly invoked within Foucauldian geometries of prison reform. By remembering francophone poets and philosophers, the point of French colonialism in shaping Genet’s anti-identitarian geometry becomes reducible within Brueton’s analysis. A global positioning strategy illuminating Genet within a francophone epistemology would have invited new methods of meaning-making about Genet’s own life, as well as his literary and political afterlife in Western culture.

Seeing Puppetry: Winter Report from New York City

Seeing Puppetry: Winter Report from New York City

Age differences in visual statistical learning: Investigating the effects of selective attention and stimulus category.

A cognitive function that is of interest when investigating age-related changes is statistical learning-the ability to detect and extract regularities in sensory information from our rich, dynamic, and complex environment. A previous study has suggested that there were age differences in visual statistical learning, with older adults demonstrating visual statistical learning of attended and unattended information (due to the "hyper-binding effect"). In the present study, we were interested in investigating whether there are age differences in visual statistical learning and whether stimulus category influenced visual statistical learning of unattended information in older adults. We tested two stimulus categories: highly familiar line drawings and abstract shapes. Participants completed a selective-attention task, in which regularities were embedded into both the attended and unattended visual streams. Then, participants completed a triplet-discrimination task, which assessed their ability to extract regularities from the attended and unattended visual streams. We also implemented a 4-point confidence-rating scale in the triplet-discrimination task as an assessment of participants' awareness of these regularities. There were four key findings. First, selective attention modulates visual statistical learning, with greater visual statistical learning for attended information than for unattended information. Second, there were age differences in visual statistical learning, but these differences were only observed for visual statistical learning of attended information. Third, stimulus category did not affect visual statistical learning of unattended information in older adults. Fourth, visual statistical learning occurs with awareness of statistical regularities. Further research is warranted to investigate the age-related mechanisms underlying visual statistical learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Peripheral vision in matching-to-sample procedures.

Eye-tracking has been used to investigate observing responses in matching-to-sample procedures. However, in visual search, peripheral vision plays an important role. Therefore, three experiments were conducted to investigate the extent to which adult participants can discriminate stimuli that vary in size and position in the periphery. Experiment 1 used arbitrary matching with abstract stimuli, Experiment 2 used identity matching with abstract stimuli, and Experiment 3 used identity matching with simple (familiar) shapes. In all three experiments, participants were taught eight conditional discriminations establishing four 3-member classes of stimuli. Four different stimulus sizes and three different stimulus positions were manipulated in the 12 peripheral test phases. In these test trials, participants had to fixate their gaze on the sample stimulus in the middle of the screen while selecting a comparison stimulus. Eye movements were measured with a head-mounted eye-tracker during both training and testing. Experiment 1 shows that participants can discriminate small abstract stimuli that are arbitrarily related in the periphery. Experiment 2 shows that matching identical stimuli does not affect discrimination in the periphery compared to arbitrarily related stimuli. However, Experiment 3 shows that discrimination increases when stimuli are well-known simple shapes.

Generalizing event shapes: in search of lost collider time

We introduce a new class of collider-type observables in conformal field theories which we call generalized event shapes. They are defined as matrix elements of light-ray operators that are sensitive to the longitudinal, or time-dependent, structure of the state produced in the collision. Generalized event shapes can be studied using both correlation functions and scattering amplitudes. They are infrared finite and smoothly transit over to the familiar event shapes. We compute them in planar mathcal{N} = 4 super-Yang-Mills theory at weak and strong coupling, and study their physical properties. We show that at strong coupling both the stringy and quantum-gravitational corrections to the energy-energy correlation exhibit longitudinal broadening that manifests itself through the presence of long-time tails in the energy flux measured by the detectors.

Media Hot and Cold. By Nicole Starosielski

To walk into the world of Nicole Starosielski’s Media Hot and Cold is to see familiar shapes with new intensities. From the opening pages, as Starosielski recounts dictating the book in furtive moments on her smartphone as she built a farm, noticing all around her how the environment swayed to temperature, the reader has the sense of being initiated into an experience that the author continues to undergo. Issues of heat and cold appear unbounded, and Starosielski sets the stakes high from the outset: “The most influential messages of the twenty-first century will be sent not through words and images but through heat and cold” (1). Contestations over temperature, coalescing into broad social configurations of thermopolitics and thermopower, will define global geopolitical orders for the coming centuries. Their effects will reach down to the daily lives of all the world’s inhabitants, though unevenly and unequally. Some are already well-known: the slow and uneven violence of climate change; the routine social discipline of temperature scans at airports, schools, and doctors’ offices; and the increasing use of smart thermostats. Some are more covert. Starosielski first and foremost works against the concealments of the nearly unquestioned faith in thermal objectivity, or the notion that temperature is an impartial measure. Temperature is cultural and political, less a standard than a means of standardizing: devices and technologies, to be sure, but also human bodies, as in medical practice. To trace the cultural dimensions of temperature, Starosielski combines a book-level metallurgical approach, which brings together disparate cases from the already excavated historical record into new composites, with a chapter-level genealogical approach to a series of thermal media. The first three chapters focus on specific thermal techniques—the thermostat, which became a site of negotiation over standard temperatures; coldsploitation, which sold the pleasures of feeling cold; and the violent slave-era and post-slavery practice of sweatboxing, in which bodies were subjected to inhuman temperatures with their murders ascribed to “natural causes” (119). While the first half of the book takes a media-theoretical approach to thermal practices, the second half concerns more commonly understood media, such as the heat ray as a form of communications transmission, the infrared camera as a means of subvisual imaging, and the internet as subtended by massive infrastructures of cooling. Established across the chapters is a formal theory of thermal media. Convective media, such as air and water employed in home heating systems, supplant the central role of the wood furnace and are the subject of the book’s opening chapter. Conductive media, involving the direct contact of bodies to thermal sensations or devices to signals of heat, have been revived in recent years for personal comfort devices. Radiant media, lastly, work with electromagnetic waves, such as shortwave radio or infrared radiation, to generate or intensify heat. This last form opens up to one of the book’s most memorable lines about temperature and living bodies: “We are all radiant; we radiate” (139). And indeed, the book itself radiates, with human warmth and scholarly insight.

Native language experience shapes pre-attentive foreign tone processing and guides rapid memory trace build-up: An ERP study.

Language experience, particularly from our native language (L1), shapes our perception of other languages around us. The present study examined how L1 experience moulds the initial processing of foreign (L2) tone during acquisition. In particular, we investigated whether learners were able to rapidly forge new neural memory traces for novel tonal words, which was tracked by recording learners’ ERP responses during two word acquisition sessions. We manipulated the degree of L1–L2 familiarity by comparing learners with a nontonal L1 (German) and a tonal L1 (Swedish) and by using tones that were similar (fall) or dissimilar (high, low, rise) to those occurring in Swedish. Our results indicate that a rapid, pre‐attentive memory trace build‐up for tone manifests in an early ERP component at ~50 ms but only at particularly high levels of L1–L2 similarity. Specifically, early processing was facilitated for an L2 tone that had a familiar pitch shape (fall) and word‐level function (inflection). This underlines the importance of these L1 properties for the early processing of L2 tone. In comparison, a later anterior negativity related to the processing of the tones’ grammatical content was unaffected by native language experience but was instead influenced by lexicality, pitch prominence, entrenchment, and successful learning. Behaviorally, learning effects emerged for all learners and tone types, regardless of L1–L2 familiarity or pitch prominence. Together, the findings suggest that while L1‐based facilitation effects occur, they mainly affect early processing stages and do not necessarily result in more successful L2 acquisition at behavioral level.

Variability in the meridional overturning circulation at 32°S in the Pacific Ocean diagnosed by inverse box models

The meridional circulation and transport at 32°S in the Pacific Ocean in 1992 and 2017 are compared with analogous data from 2003 and 2009 computed by Hernández-Guerra and Talley (2016). The hydrographic data come from the GO-SHIP database and an inverse box model has been applied with similar constraints as in Hernández-Guerra and Talley (2016). In 1992, 2003 and 2017 the pattern of the overturning streamfunction and circulation are similar, but in 2009 the pattern of the circulation changes in the whole water column. The horizontal distribution of mass transports at all depths in 1992 and 2017 resembles the familiar shape of the “classical gyre” also observed in 2003 and is notably different to the “bowed gyre” found in 2009. The hydrographic data have been compared with data obtained from the numerical modelling outputs of ECCO, SOSE, GLORYS, and MOM. Results show that none of these models properly represents the “bowed gyre” circulation in 2009, and this change in circulation pattern was not observed during the entire length of model simulations. Additionally, the East Australian Current in the western boundary presents higher mass transport in the hydrographic data than in any numerical modelling output. Its poleward mass transport ranges from −35.1 ± 2.0 Sv in 1992 to −54.3 ± 2.6 Sv in 2003. Conversely, the Peru-Chile Current is well represented in models and presents an equatorward mass transport from 2.3 ± 0.8 Sv in 2009 to 4.4 ± 1.0 Sv in 1992. Furthermore, the Peru-Chile Undercurrent presents a more intense poleward mass transport in 2009 (−3.8 ± 1.2 Sv). In addition, the temperature and freshwater transports in 1992 (0.42 ± 0.12 PW and 0.26 ± 0.08 Sv), 2003 (0.38 ± 0.12 PW and 0.25 ± 0.02 Sv), and 2017 (0.42 ± 0.12 PW and 0.34 ± 0.08 Sv) are similar, but significantly different from those in 2009 (0.16 ± 0.12 PW and 0.50 ± 0.03 Sv, respectively). To clarify the causes of these different circulation schemes, a linear Rossby wave model is adopted, which includes the wind-stress curl variability as remote forcing and the response to sea surface height changes along 30°S.

Plenty to Come: Making Sense of Correia & Rosenkranz’s Growing Block

Abstract Fabrice Correia and Sven Rosenkranz’s book Nothing to Come: a Defence of the Growing Block Theory of Time offers an incredibly rich and skillful defense of the growing block theory (GBT), a view of time that arguably has much intuitive appeal, and which has been under attack from many sides. Nonetheless, I have to report that the book’s tense-logical course of treatment has not worked for me; I still struggle with making sense of the GBT. This article begins by drawing out some implications of the book’s set up. First, the notion of existence in play here is not interpretable on the basis of ordinary usage. Second, it would be a mistake to take the tense-logical framework to have any metaphysical significance. I then articulate two main worries about their version of the GBT. The first worry takes a familiar shape: it is just hard to see how their view is dynamic in the relevant sense. The second worry is that the topic seems to have been changed. C&R’s logical system helps itself to key notions whose intended interpretation includes a solution to every metaphysical puzzle about the GBT, so that these puzzles are not so much addressed as enshrined in a formal system. That is, their view seems to answer the question of how language should behave, if the GBT were (somehow) true.

Shape familiarity modulates preference for curvature in drawings of common-use objects.

Drawing is a way to represent common-use objects. The contour of an object is a salient feature that defines its identity. Preference for a contour (curved or angular) may depend on how familiar the resulting shape looks for that given object. In this research, we examined the influence of shape familiarity on preference for curved or sharp-angled drawings of common-use objects. We also examined the possibility that some individual differences modulated this preference. Preference for curvature was assessed with a liking rating task (Experiment 1) and with a two-alternative forced-choice task simulating approach/avoidance responses (Experiment 2). Shape familiarity was assessed with a familiarity selection task where participants selected the most familiar shape between the curved and the angular version for each object, or whether both shapes were equally familiar for the object. We found a consistent preference for curvature in both experiments. This preference increased when the objects with a curved shape were selected as the most familiar ones. We also found preference for curvature when participants selected the shape of objects as equally familiar. However, there was no preference for curvature or preference for angularity when participants selected the sharp-angled shapes as the most familiar ones. In Experiment 2, holistic and affective types of intuition predicted higher preference for curvature. Conversely, participants with higher scores in the unconventionality facet showed less preference for the curved drawings. We conclude that shape familiarity and individual characteristics modulate preference for curvature.

Anomalous anisotropy of the lower critical field and Meissner effect in UTe2

We report on low temperature susceptibility and magnetization measurements made on single crystals of the recently discovered heavy-fermion superconductor UTe$_2$ and compare the results with the two ambient pressure ferromagnetic superconductors URhGe and UCoGe. Hysteresis curves in the superconducting phase show a familiar diamond shape superimposed on a large paramagnetic background. The Meissner state was measured by zero field cooling in small fields of a few Oe as well as ac susceptibility measurements in small fields and resulted in 100\% shielding, with a sharp transition. However the field cooling Meissner-Ochsenfeld effect (expulsion of flux) was negligible in fields greater than just a few Oe, but becomes nearly 30\% of the perfect diamagnetic signal when the field was reduced to 0.01~Oe. The critical current due to flux pinning was studied by ac susceptibility techniques. Over the range in fields and temperature of this study, no signature of a ferromagnetic transition could be discerned. The lower critical field $H_{\rm c1}$ has been measured along the three crystalographic axes, and surprisingly, the anisotropy of $H_{\rm c1}$ contradicts that of the upper critical field. We discuss this discrepancy and show that it may provide additional support for a magnetic field-dependent pairing mediated by ferromagnetic fluctuations in UTe$_2$.

Geochemistry of aerodynamically distorted Australasian microtektites: Implications for ejecta on Mars and Venus

We report microtektites recovered from a large area of the deep seafloor (Central Indian Ocean) that appear to have undergone aerodynamic distortion during re-entry into the atmosphere. Considering the geographic locations, stratigraphic position and chemical compositions these glassy forms belong to the Australasian tektite strewn field. The microtektites are elongated to lengths of cms, sometimes flattened, bent, folded and fused at both ends suggesting that this side could have been the Earth-facing side during the re-entry. The presence of flow lines and distortional features are indicative of high atmospheric pressures experienced by the microtektites. The location where these microtektites were recovered constitute distal ejecta, and the shape distortion, that occurred during re-entry of the ejecta, seems to have affected only a few amongst the extensive collection of microtektites. Most of the specimens contain lechatelierite inclusions and higher volatile oxides, which are indicative of incomplete homogenization after melting and lower temperatures of formation vis-a-vis other specimens at the same location. The element distribution patterns in aerodynamically distorted microtektites suggest that ablation was similar to normal spherical tektites in which volatile elements are preserved. In contrast, aerodynamically ablated forms of Australasian ejecta show skin melting where thin layers of the anterior portions of samples flow back giving rise to the familiar button shapes. Our observation of delicate, elongated, flattened, and viscously deformed specimens is perhaps the first to imply that at the distal end of ejecta, each spot in the specimens has undergone different levels of trajectories, heating and ablation. These investigations could have implications to understand ejecta emplacement characteristics on planetary surfaces that contain appreciable atmospheres such as Mars and Venus.

Task set and instructions influence the weight of figural priors: A psychophysical study with extremal edges and familiar configuration

In figure–ground organization, the figure is defined as a region that is both “shaped” and “nearer.” Here we test whether changes in task set and instructions can alter the outcome of the cross-border competition between figural priors that underlies figure assignment. Extremal edge (EE), a relative distance prior, has been established as a strong figural prior when the task is to report “which side is nearer?” In three experiments using bipartite stimuli, EEs competed and cooperated with familiar configuration, a shape prior for figure assignment in a “which side is shaped?” task.” Experiment 1 showed small but significant effects of familiar configuration for displays sketching upright familiar objects, although “shaped-side” responses were predominantly determined by EEs. In Experiment 2, instructions regarding the possibility of perceiving familiar shapes were added. Now, although EE remained the dominant prior, the figure was perceived on the familiar-configuration side of the border on a significantly larger percentage of trials across all display types. In Experiment 3, both task set (nearer/shaped) and the presence versus absence of instructions emphasizing that familiar objects might be present were manipulated within subjects. With familiarity thus “primed,” effects of task set emerged when EE and familiar configuration favored opposite sides as figure. Thus, changing instructions can modulate the weighing of figural priors for shape versus distance in figure assignment in a manner that interacts with task set. Moreover, we show that the influence of familiar parts emerges in participants without medial temporal lobe/ perirhinal cortex brain damage when instructions emphasize that familiar objects might be present.

Archaeologies of Austral: Australian Identities from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT Most Australians are unaware of the deep Pleistocene human history of their continent. Coining the phrase “archaeologies of austral” to refer to the deep time histories of a changing southern continent, this article challenges present assumptions about “Australia” and its identity. It considers archaeology’s contribution towards understanding Australian identity, as a form of translation incorporating Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges. It starts with the continent’s oldest known rock art painting—fittingly, of a kangaroo—and then broadens its focus to position the familiar shape of Australia as a geofact of the last 6,000 years. Placing the kangaroo painting within its environmental and human contexts shows how rock art functioned as a means to manage social and environmental change by making, maintaining and sometimes changing human–human and human–world relationships. This work reveals ambiguities in archaeological narratives of “deep histories”, such as reifying things, dates and people, which in Indigenous traditions are fluid and omni-temporal. An archaeological perspective may challenge shallower histories of Australia and reveal much longer processes of identity-making that enhance our understanding in the present. It also explores legacies in the present, and how socially engaged archaeological research may continue to be useful in the Anthropocene.

Prediction of Optimized Color Design for Sports Shoes Using an Artificial Neural Network and Genetic Algorithm

Product design is a complicated activity that is highly reliant on individual impressions, feelings and emotions. Back-propagated neural networks have already been applied in Kansei engineering to solve difficult design problems. However, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have a slow rate of convergence, and find it difficult to devise a suitable network structure and find the global optimal solution. This study developed an ANN-based predictive model enhanced with a genetic algorithm (GA) optimization technique to search for close-to-optimal sports shoe color schemes for a given product image. The design factors of the sports shoe were set as the network inputs, and the Kansei objective value was the output of the GA-based ANN model. The results show that a model built with three hidden layers (28 × 38 × 19) could predict the object value reliably. The R2 of the preference objective was equal to 0.834, suggesting that the developed model is a feasible and efficient tool for predicting the objective value of product images. This study also found that the prediction accuracy for shoes with two colors was higher than that for shoes with only one color. In addition, the prediction accuracy for shoes with a relatively familiar shape was also higher. However, the prediction of color preferences is relatively difficult, because the respondents had different individual color preferences. Exploring the sensitivity and importance of the visual factors (form, color, texture) for various image words is a worthy topic for future research in this field.