Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Aesthetic value, beauty, is a complex concept in that it has both subjective and objective aspects. However, in previous eye-tracking studies of artworks, the target associated with the gaze has often been only the latter image feature (e.g., symmetry). By contrast, recent developments in computational aesthetics (especially aesthetic classifiers) offers a path that treats these two aspects comprehensively. Along this line, we further develop eye-tracking research. We conducted computational model-based data analyses of eye-tracking behaviour, with the aim of providing more fine-grained insights into the comprehensive concept of beauty. In contrast to previous studies that focused on Western fine-artworks, our study is distinctive in that it focuses on visual art in Eastern culture, namely Japanese ukiyo-e (the well-known works of Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige). Our empirical results showed that the gaze trajectory and movement area differed significantly between highly-rated and non-highly-rated paintings. This provides positive evidence for the relationship between aesthetic value and perceptual behaviour.