Photography is an art form where integration of the human visual perception and psychological experiences result in aesthetic pleasure. This research utilizes eye tracking to explore the impact of the properties of Gestalt in photography on people's visual cognitive process in order to understand the psychological processes and patterns of photography appreciation. This study found that images with Gestalt qualities can significantly affect fixation, sightline distribution, and subjective evaluation of aesthetics and complexity. Closure composition images seem to make cognition simpler, resulting in the least number of fixation and saccades, longer fixation duration, and more concentrated sightline indicating stronger feeling of beauty, while images which portray similarity results in the greatest fixation and saccades, longest saccade duration, and greater scattering of sightline, indicating feelings of complexity and unsightliness. The results of this research are closely related to the theories of art and design, and have reference value for photography theory and application.
An 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program enables novices to learn and practice mindfulness meditation. A longitudinal study design has been used in prior research to investigate the effect of short-term mindfulness meditation training on brain structures. Many studies have demonstrated microstructural changes in the white matter by comparing baseline measurements with measurements obtained immediately after short-term meditation training. However, these studies did not clarify the evolution of the modulated microstructures several months after mindfulness meditation practice is discontinued.Therefore, in this study, we recruited 13 novice practitioners and administered an 8-week MBSR training program. We extended the span of the longitudinal study by adding a third measurement taken approximately 6 months after the second time point. Diffusion indices derived from diffusion spectrum imaging were used to quantify the temporal changes in modulation across three time points. The analysis identified four tract bundles that were significantly modulated after the 8-week MBSR training program, namely the callosal fibers connecting the bilateral amygdalae and bilateral hippocampi, right thalamic radiation of the auditory nerve, and right uncinate fasciculus. At the third time point, at which the participants had discontinued practice for approximately 6 months, the diffusion indices of the four tract bundles still presented a significant difference compared with the baseline. Our results indicate that the modulation of microstructural properties of the white matter tract induced by the 8week MBSR program was sustained after completion of the program and support that neuroplasticity in brain connection persists after the discontinuation of meditation training.
Our previous study found that a task-irrelevant salient line impaired visual search when the salient line was composite of collinear bars (Jingling, 2010). In this study, we further investigated whether this inhibition can be observed in eye movements. The search display was a lattice of 21 by 27 bars. The task was to discriminate the orientation of a target, which was presented on one of seven bars in the central of search display. One of the columns of the bars was vertical, thus bars on this line were collinear to each other. The other bars were horizontal, making the collinear line salient. The target was on the bars at salient line by chance. Eight participants were recruited, and eye movements were recorded by EyeLink 1,000 with 250 Hz sampling rate. Results of hand response times replicated our previous findings: Responses were slower for targets on the bars at the salient line than that in the background. However, saccadic duration was not statistically different for these two types of targets. Our data showed that a collinear salient line interferes with key press but not eye movements, suggesting that the inhibitory effect emerged later than sensory information process.
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