| Gesture-based interaction, which allows users to control devices with hand or finger motions, is becoming increasingly popular in the past few years. Although gesture-based interaction has garnered much interest from practitioners and academics, many extant studies are from the usability perspective, which is not sufficient to understand the psychological and behavioral impacts gestures might have on users. This dissertation seeks to extend the boundary of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) literature by examining how gesture-based interaction shapes user cognition and behavior via two mechanisms: facilitating mental imagery and activating abstract concepts associated with a specific gesture. These constitute two essays of the dissertation. Specifically, study 1 examines how different types of interaction mode (touchscreen gesture vs. mid-air gesture vs. mouse) affect consumer mental imagery in online shopping; study 2 investigates how different touch gestures (press vs. tap) affect users' self-regulation when they are making health-related decisions. |
