Cultural Diversity in Oculometric Parameters When Viewing Art and Non-Art

Abstract

Art is culturally diverse and so are its viewers. Whereas differences in artworks across cultures have been a major concern of art historians, variances in art perception across culture (e.g., whether and how people who are familiar with different visual cultures look at artworks differently) were little studied so far. Several arthistorical theories argue that certain elements of culture (e.g., writing systems) might lead to differences in viewing artworks. However, it is not yet clear whether and to what extent enculturated knowledge and practice influence art perception. In the present study, we compared eye movement patterns of participants from Austria and Japan—two countries with distinctively different writing/reading systems—while viewing European art, Japanese art, and everyday photographs. The results reveal significant differences between the two groups: Japanese participants made more vertical saccades when viewing artworks and more downward saccades in general, but no significant differences in the number of horizontal saccades. Austrian participants performed larger horizontal saccades, while no significant differences were found in the amplitude of vertical saccades. Both groups also revealed different patterns in the variance of saccade amplitude and fixation duration over the 12 s viewing time for each image, which can be related to local and global viewing behavior. Possibly those differences are related to reading/writing systems, but also to different cognitive expectations toward pictures: the equivalence of image and calligraphy in the Japanese tradition versus the habit to make and see pictures as window-like perspectival views of reality in the European Renaissance tradition.