Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Massaro, Davide
• Savazzi, Federica
• Di Dio, Cinzia
• Freedberg, David
• Gallese, Vittorio
• Gilli, Gabriella
• Marchetti, Antonella
• Tsakiris, Manos

Titel

When art moves the eyes: a behavioral and eye-tracking study

Ist Teil von

• PloS one, 2012-05, Vol.7 (5), p.e37285-e37285

Ort / Verlag

United States: Public Library of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

EZB-FREE-00999 freely available EZB journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 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.