When Art Moves the Eyes: A Behavioral and Eye-Tracking Study

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate, using eye-tracking technique, the influence of bottom-up and top-down processes on visual behavior while subjects, naïve to art criticism, were presented with representational paintings. Forty-two subjects viewed color and black and white paintings (Color) categorized as dynamic or static (Dynamism) (bottom-up processes). Half of the images represented natural environments and half human subjects (Content); all stimuli were displayed under aesthetic and movement judgment conditions (Task) (top-down processes). Results on gazing behavior showed that content-related top-down processes prevailed over low-level visually-driven bottom-up processes when a human subject is represented in the painting. On the contrary, bottom-up processes, mediated by low-level visual features, particularly affected gazing behavior when looking at nature-content images. We discuss our results proposing a reconsideration of the definition of content-related top-down processes in accordance with the concept of embodied simulation in art perception.

A TMS study on the contribution of visual area V5 to the perception of implied motion in art and its appreciation

“…Mean response times are shown in A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 9 significantly reduced liking of abstract paintings, but it did not affect liking of representational paintings, even though a pilot experiment showed that liking of both representational and abstract paintings positively correlated with the extent to which paintings were perceived as dynamic, in line with prior evidence (Massaro et al, 2012;Valentine, 1962). Overall, participants took longer to decide whether they liked a painting or not than do decide about whether they found the painting dynamic.…”

“…Because in abstract art the contribution of form to liking is not overshadowed by the contribution of content, it stands to reason that the effects of interfering with formal features should be larger than for representational art. This notwithstanding the importance that the dynamism perceived in a representational painting has in driving its aesthetic appreciation, as demonstrated by our pilot study and by prior evidence (Massaro et al, 2012;Valentine, 1962).…”

Electrooculography in the Field of Assistive Interaction Communication

“…Past years many researchers work in communicating devices to interact with computers, such as a mouse or keyboard. In these cases, computer commands must be generated without using arms or hands, by using recognition of voice [2], brain-computer interface (BCI) [3]- [4] or eye movements [5]- [8].…”

“…EOG detects the eyes movement by measuring, through electrodes, the difference of potential between the cornea and the retina [5]. EOG is used in previous works so as to interact with different devices.…”

Different contributions of visual and motor brain areas during liking judgments of same- and different-gender bodies

“…This supports the view that aesthetic experience is related to sensorimotor embodiment, namely to mapping others' actions and sensations onto the observer's bodily states (see also Cross et al 2009a,b;Cross & 4 Ticini, 2012;Ticini et al, 2015;Kirsch, Urgesi and Cross, 2015 for a review). It is worth noting, however, that the role of perceived dynamism and embodiment processes may not be limited to the appreciation of human figures, since representational paintings with greater implied motion are preferred when they depict either human figures or landscapes (Massaro et al, 2012). Indeed, a recent EEG study by Umiltà and colleagues (2012) found suppression of the mu rhythm (indexing motor activation) during passive observation of Lucio Fontana's slashed canvases (where the action of the artist is not seen, but can readily be inferred), but not during observation of graphically modified versions of them.…”