Metaphorical types of industrial icons: Impact on cognitive performance and the neural pattern in processing

The rapid development of intelligent manufacturing poses challenges to the presentation of industrial information, leading to a recent surge of interest in industrial icons. To explore the semantic understanding of industrial icons within the intelligent manufacturing field, this study conducted an event-related potential (ERP) investigation focusing on metaphorical types (object metaphor, structural metaphor) and semantic conditions (match, mismatch). The ERP components observed—N1, P200, N400, and P600—reflect different stages of cognitive processing. N1 represents an initial response to visual perception, P200 indicates early recognition of semantic violations, N400 is associated with semantic processing and integration, and P600 reflects a prolonged reanalysis process for semantic integration. The study found that object metaphor elicited larger amplitudes in P200 and a smaller N400 compared to structural metaphor, suggesting that object metaphor requires more attention resources and is less impacted by semantic violations. However, the amplitude of P600 showed no significant difference between the two metaphorical types. Behavioral results demonstrated that object metaphor had higher accuracy and shorter response times than structural metaphor, indicating superior cognitive performance for object metaphor. These findings propose a novel perspective on using ERP components (N1, P200, N400, P600) to gain a deeper understanding of industrial icons. This contributes to the study of metaphorical design and the semantic understanding of industrial icons in the intelligent manufacturing domain.