ARTICLE IN PRESS

0272-4944/$ - se

doi:10.1016/j.je

�CorrespondE-mail addr

Journal of Environmental Psychology 28 (2008) 185–191

www.elsevier.com/locate/jep

Do eye movements measured across high and low fascinationphotographs differ? Addressing Kaplan’s fascination hypothesis

Rita Bertoa,�, Stefano Massaccesib, Margherita Pasinic

aDipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Universita degli Studi di Padova, via Venezia 8, 35131 Padova, ItalybDipartimento di Psicologia, Universita degli Studi di Trieste, Italy

cDipartimento di Psicologia e Antropologia Culturale, Universita degli Studi di Verona, Italy

Available online 3 December 2007

Abstract

Attention restoration theory states that exposure to restorative environments engages fascination or low-effort attention, promoting

recovery of adaptive resources and providing the opportunity to rest and reflect. On the contrary, exposure to non-restorative

environments engages directed effortful attention and negatively affects mood, performance and psychophysical well being. Eye

movements are a way to measure attention when viewing a scene; therefore, it is hypothesized that the difference in the type of attention

engaged should be reflected in eye movements. To this aim eye movements were recorded during free viewing of photographs high on

fascination vs. low on fascination. Mean exploration and mean numbers of saccades and fixations were measured between the two types

of scenes. Eye movements related to photographs low on fascination were characterized by greater exploration and a greater number of

fixations compared to those rated high on fascination, though viewing time was the same. Thus scenes high on fascination were viewed

without really focusing on particular features. Differences in eye movements suggest that less effort is required to view nature than urban

scenes, which is consistent with Kaplan’s description of ‘‘soft fascination.’’

r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Fascination; Directed attention; Eye movements

1. Introduction

Considerable evidence is accumulating that viewingnature scenes has positive benefits. Participants believe thatviewing nature is restorative (Herzog, Fountaine, & Knotts,1997), and viewing nature is actually related to relaxation,improved mood, and stress reduction when compared toother scenes (Ulrich, 1979, 1981; Ulrich et al., 1991).Other research indicates that people prefer nature scenes(Hernandez, Hidalgo, Berto, & Peron, 2001; Purcell, Peron,& Berto, 2001). Many of these studies have been guided byKaplan’s (1995; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989) attentionrestoration theory (ART), which emphasizes the effortful-ness of focused attention. A few studies have demonstratedthat cognitive skills are better in nature than urban settings,including one study showing that cognitive fatigue is

e front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

nvp.2007.11.004

ing author. Tel.: +390498276911; fax: +39 0498276600.

ess: rita.berto@unipd.it (R. Berto).

improved by exposure to nature (Hartig, Evans, Jamner,Davis, & Garling, 2003) and a study showing a correlationbetween the amount of nature viewed from one’s windowand performance on a battery of cognitive tests (Tennessen& Cimprich, 1995). Berto (2005) used a standard cognitivetask for inducing attentional fatigue and then showedparticipants nature or urban scenes. People who viewed thenature scenes performed better on a subsequent cognitivetask, supporting the hypothesis that viewing nature scenesallows the attentional system to rest and recover better thanurban-industrial environments. The present study examinesadditional evidence that nature scenes have the potential tosupport attentional recovery. We use eye movementtechnology to ask whether visual perception differs betweenscenes that are predominantly natural and scenes that arepredominantly urban-industrial.Kaplan (1995) and Kaplan and Kaplan (1981) distin-

guished between effortful ‘‘voluntary’’ attention (also called‘‘directed attention’’), and the less effortful ‘‘involuntary’’

ARTICLE IN PRESSR. Berto et al. / Journal of Environmental Psychology 28 (2008) 185–191186

attention. These are the two primary forms of attention:one is based on interest, the other on effort. By this view,mental fatigue is associated with voluntary attention andoccurs because it takes considerable effort to stay focusedand avoid being distracted. In order to focus on a visualpattern, one must inhibit all competing stimuli. The twotypes of attention are based on W. James’s distinctionbetween involuntary and voluntary attention (1892). Invo-

luntary attention, renamed by Kaplan (1995) as fascination,is based on interest, and means people attend to visualpatterns without a lot of effort (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1981).When environmental patterns are interesting to us, they arefascinating (James, 1892), contain little if any distraction,and do not seem to require attention at all. In contrast,voluntary attention is necessary when interest fails. In thiscircumstance you are forced to pay attention because theenvironmental stimuli are not interesting (Kaplan, 1978).Mental fatigue represents the cumulative effect of inhibitingdistractions in order to stay focused (Kaplan, 1995).

Fascination plays a crucial role in ART (Kaplan, 1995)as fascination provides the opportunity for a depletedattentional system to rest. Fascination can orient onetowards particular content and events, and can also beengaged in the processes of exploring and making sense ofan environment (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1981). Fascination canderive from many sources: it can derive from process (e.g.story telling, gambling, problem solving) or from content

(e.g. animals, people, water, nature). Fascinating stimuliattract people and keep them from getting bored, but mostimportant they allow people to function without having touse directed attention. Fascination can be conceptualizedalong a dimension from soft to hard. Soft fascinationoccurs where a sufficient level of aesthetic is present, anddoes not preclude contemplation (Herzog et al., 1997).Natural settings are sources of soft fascination (Herzoget al., 1997). Hard fascination is where the fascination is sostrong that contemplation is not possible (e.g. watchingauto racing). In contrast, directed attention must be usedwhere fascination and other restorative properties areabsent (for more details see Kaplan, 1995).

The present study focuses on ‘‘soft fascination,’’ orwhether people view nature scenes without effort, that is,without really focusing on them (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989).For over a century, eye movements have been measured andused as indicators of visual processes. The purpose of thisstudy is to examine if and how eye movements differ betweenphotographs of environments perceived as high on fascina-tion vs. photographs of environments perceived as low onfascination, i.e., nature scenes vs. urban-industrial scenes.

Eye movements are unconscious adjustments to thedemands of attention during visual experience (Buswell,1935, p. 35). They are considered an external manifestationof attention and play an important role in indicating theamount of information being processed. Eye movementsreflect the amount of attentional effort being given toviewing a scene. Eye movement recording has been used todetermine where people focus, that is, what aspects of the

visual fields are important in perception. In essence,perceptual selection can be measured by eye fixations(Carr & Schissler, 1969). Eye movement patterns dependon the scene’s informativeness (Buswell, 1935; Mackworth& Morandi, 1988), such as the presence of coherent/incoherent objects, and objects vs. non-objects (Loftus &Mackworth, 1978). More complex scenes require higheffort; high effort is associated with high fixations. As acase in point, Loftus and Mackworth (1978) found thatviewers were asked to memorize simple line drawings, theytended to fixate on semantically inconsistent objects moreoften than semantically consistent objects.In summary, this research indicates that eye movements

are a way to measure attention when someone views a scene.In the present research, eye movements were measuredacross photographs scoring high vs. low on fascination.With viewing time held constant, the mean amount ofexploration (distance covered) and the mean numbersof saccades (shifts in direction) and fixations (periods offocused attention) will be considered for each type of scene.A variety of psychological and imaging studies support theidea that shifts in a viewer’s attention are related to thefixations (see for example Corbetta, 1998; Culham et al.,1998). In addition, Hayhoe, Land, and Shrivastava (1999)showed that fixations revealed a sensitivity to stimuluschanges that participants could not report verbally. Sincethe fixation’s locus and focus of attention are tightly linked,this aspect of eye movements is likely to be the mostsensitive measure of observer’s attentional state. Fixationsreflect the primary distribution of attention.Eye movements are a normal aspect of everyday visual

perception, and they are often recorded during ordinarycognitive processing tasks such as scene perception, read-ing, visual search tasks and memory, and recognition tasks(Rayner & Pollatsek, 1992). In contrast, in this experimentpicture viewing was not aimed at performing a task;participants had only to look freely at the pictures whiletheir eye movements were recorded. Knowledge of the taskand nature of the target play important roles whenparticipants select their focus of attention; in fact theattentional system allocates weights to the target presum-ably based on the task parameters (Navalparkkam & Itti,2005). For example, Yarbus (1967) showed drasticallydifferent patterns of eye movements over the same scenedepending on the task. Other researcher also shows that thescan path can vary strongly with the instruction accordingto which a subject scans the images (Unema, Pannasch,Joos, & Velichkovsky, 2005). For this reason participantsin this experiment were not given a task to perform.Furthermore, we examined where on the photographsparticipants focused their attention to see if this differedbetween nature and urban-industrial scenes.In summary, this study is concerned with eye movements

as indicators of the amount of focused attention used toview nature vs. urban-industrial scenes. According to ART,scenes scoring high on fascination should require less visualeffort, whereas scenes lacking perceived fascination should

ARTICLE IN PRESSR. Berto et al. / Journal of Environmental Psychology 28 (2008) 185–191 187

engage directed attention. These differences should bereflected in different eye movements as participants viewthe scenes. Thus, eye movements can be considered anindicator of the type of attention engaged when viewing ascene.

2. Method

2.1. Selection of stimulus materials

Forty undergraduate students (mean age ¼ 26,SD ¼ 5.23) at the University of Padova (Italy) rated onehundred photographs representing natural, built andmixed environments on the Perceived Restorativeness Scale

(PRS; Italian version by Peron and Berto in Berto, 1998).No settings contained people. The PRS Italian version ismade up of 26 items that measure the perception of fiverestorative factors: being-away, fascination, coherence,scope, compatibility. Each item was assessed on an11-point scale (0 ¼ not at all, 6 ¼ rather much, 10 ¼completely). These PRS ratings discriminated betweenphotographs of environments that were high or low onperceived restorativeness. Since that assessment was aimedto obtain a group of very restorative environments (scoreX6.5) and a group of very low restorative environments(score p3.5), the intermediate PRS score scenes wereeliminated. Twenty-five photographs of natural environ-ments representing: lake, river, sea, hills, wood, forest andorchard, scored higher than 6.5, and 25 photographs ofbuilt environments representing: industrial zone, housing,historical center, and urban areas, scored less than 3.5. Thephotographs clearly differed on the five subscales, andperceived restorativeness of natural scenes was significantlyhigher on all five factors in comparison with built scenes(Mean scores are provided in Table 1). However thedifference on fascination was of primary interest to thestudy’s aim. Natural scenes scored high whereas builtscenes scored very low. For this reason the labels high

Table 1

Mean scores of the five restorative factors and restorativeness mean score

averaged across the two groups of photographs

Natural

photographs

Built

photographs

t-test

Being-away 8.34 (0.79) 1.24 (0.80) t(48) ¼ 32.02,

po0.01

Fascination 7.85 (0.75) 1.97 (1.10) t (48) ¼ 21.99,

po0.01

Coherence 4.25 (1.20) 5.49 (1.44) t(48) ¼ �3.21,

po0.01

Scope 7.61 (0.99) 2.22 (0.78) t(48) ¼ 21.17,

po0.01

Compatibility 5.43 (0.90) 3.05 (1.30) t(48) ¼ 7.50,

po0.01

Mean

restorativeness

6.70 (0.50) 2.79 (0.66) t(48) ¼ 23.27,

po0.01

Standard deviation in parenthesis.

fascination and low fascination were used for the formerand for the latter group of photographs, respectively.The photographs used in this study represented outdoor

environments easy to recognize where no incongruent orsalient elements were present that could affect the eyemovement patterns. Although measurement of visualcomplexity was not of concern in this study, number ofdetails and their distribution were balanced across thephotographs.

2.2. Participants

Nine graduate students (mean age ¼ 30.5, SD ¼ 7.69) atthe University of Padova (Italy) gave their consent toparticipate in the experiment. Participants had normal orcorrected to normal vision.

2.3. Apparatus

The Eye Position Detector System (EPDS) was used.This unobtrusive device consists of two computers inter-faced through a communication serial port (RS232): (a) aPentium 4 2.4GHZ, 512 RAM to recognize the pupil andto detect the eye movements and (b) a notebook Pentium3500MHZ, 256 RAM to set up the experiment, show thestimuli and record the data. The Labview 5.1 programminglanguage was used for the experimental stimuli presenta-tion. The stimuli were shown on a screen with a diagonal of38 cm that subtended a visual angle of 38.211 and with aresolution of 1024� 768 pixels corresponding to a visualangle of 8.711� 6.531, the total screen surface subtended avisual angle of 56.871. The device was also equipped with avideo camera to record the eye movements. The calibra-tion-recognition of the pupil was made by asking theparticipants to fixate on two markers on the screen, on thetop left and on the bottom right. If during the experimentthe initial calibration proved to be inadequate, anothercalibration was made. Only the calibration and position ofthe left eye was tracked, although the participant’s visionwas binocular. The video camera was placed near thescreen where the stimuli were shown. The video camerawas sensitive to infrared light components, so a lowintensity light setting was created. The EPDS gives twotypes of outputs: a series of x–y coordinates taken every40ms that corresponds to the sequence of points on thephotograph viewed by the participants, and a visualpattern on each photograph, i.e. the eye track. Theexperimenter could see the visual pattern on another screenwhile the participant was actually exploring the photo-graph during the experiment.

2.4. Procedure

The 50 photographs were randomized and nine differentsequences were created, one for each participant. Partici-pants were tested individually in a laboratory; the roomwas otherwise illuminated by a low intensity indirect light

ARTICLE IN PRESS

1

5

4

3

2

1

B (4,3)

A (2,1)C (4,1)

2 3 4 5

Fig. 2. Representation of the Euclid distance: ‘‘A’’ represents the first pair

of coordinates (2,1), ‘‘B’’ the second (4,3). Drawing A and B projections

and using the following equation: (AB)2 ¼ (AC)2+(BC)2, the distance

between A and B can be calculated (Pitagora’s theorem).

R. Berto et al. / Journal of Environmental Psychology 28 (2008) 185–191188

source. The light condition remained constant during allrecordings. Participants sat in front of the computer screenat a distance of 57 cm. A chin rest was used to hold thehead steady and to keep the viewing distance constant.Participants were given the following instruction: ‘‘Now a

series of photographs will appear on the computer screen, you

should look freely at the photographs, don’t try to memorize

any detail because this is not a memory task and no task

related to the photograph contents will occur at the end of the

eye movements recording. I want just to measure your eye

movements during your viewing of these scenes. Before the

presentation of every photograph a fixation point will appear,

look at the fixation point before you begin exploring each

photograph’’. The fixation point was a cross-placed at thecenter of the screen: its size was 77� 77 pixel and itsubtended a visual angle of 2.701� 2.701. To assure that allparticipants began exploring each photograph from thesame point, the photograph to explore appeared only if thesubject looked at the fixation point. Each photographappeared on the computer screen for a standard exposuretime of 15 s (Henderson, Weeks, & Hollingworth, 1990;Herzog, 1985).

2.5. Measures

Data analyses were performed on the x�y coordinates.The x�y coordinates correspond to the sequence of the eyepositions during the 15 s of photograph exploration. Fromthese coordinates, the mean exploration and the meannumbers of saccades and fixations were calculated for eachphotograph and then combined for each environmentalcategory. Saccades are movements from point to pointwhereas fixations are when the eyes are aimed at a point inthe photograph. An observation of the same point thatlasted at least 150ms was considered a fixation. The EPDSrecorded the eye movements every 40ms, therefore foursequential observations of the same point were recorded asa fixation (40� 4 ¼ 160ms). A saccade is a rapid eyemovement that produces a change in direction. The

Fig. 1. Example of visual pattern of a high fascination photograph

identification of saccades and fixations were checked onthe visual pattern of each photograph. Examples of thesemeasures are shown in Fig. 1, where the lines represent thesaccades from point to point, and the fixations are whenthe eyes are aimed at a fixed point in the photograph. Thetwo additional measures of saccade amplitude and fixationduration were not considered because in free viewing, allpotential targets are available continuously, and therewould no way to determine the saccadic latencies unequi-vocally (Unema et al., 2005).Exploration, here called distance, corresponded to how

much the eye moved inside the photograph. It was a way toquantify photograph exploration using the eye coordinates:High distance scores represented high exploration. Pita-gora’s theorem was used to calculate this variable.Knowing that the x�y coordinates correspond to thesequence of the eye positions during the 15 s of photographexploration, each photograph can be considered a Carte-sian plane containing the coordinates (see Fig. 2). Let us

on the left, and of a low fascination photograph on the right.

ARTICLE IN PRESS

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

1 3 5 7 9 10 11 12

Sections

Fixations

High-fascination

Low-fascination

2 4 6 8

Fig. 3. Trend of the mean number of fixations for sections across

category.

R. Berto et al. / Journal of Environmental Psychology 28 (2008) 185–191 189

consider ‘‘A’’ and ‘‘B’’ as the first and the second pointviewed by a participant. The distance between A and B andB and the next coordinate pair and so forth, werequantified using the Euclid distance (this is the reason forcalling this variable ‘‘distance’’). First the distance wasquantified in pixels and then in visual angle grades. Thesum of the distances covered for each photograph wasdivided by the real number of coordinates for thatphotograph recorded by the EPDS, yielding the meandistance (in pixels) covered for each photograph. Thedistance values in pixels were then converted into visualangle grades.

3. Results

Though the purpose of this study was not concernedwith individual differences in eye movements, someobservations concerning subjects’ eye movements can bemade. Each participant had a different scan path for everyphotograph. Yet within this diversity an apparent regular-ity of eye movements appeared. Most participants’ eyesexplored the photograph features serially, moving from leftto right as if ‘‘reading’’ the photographs, following fairlyregular pathways, rather than crisscrossing the photographat random. The eye movements from feature to featurereflected a sequence of internal shifts of attention,processing the feature serially and following the scan pathsuggested by the photograph content.

The mean distance score was calculated for eachphotograph, averaged across participants and then aver-aged for each category. We chose to use photograph as theunit of analysis (rather than participant) in order to seewhether variability due to category was more powerfulthan variability due to particular photograph. As expected,more distance was covered in exploring the low fascinationphotographs; their exploration subtended a mean visualangle of 1.031, SD ¼70.101, whereas exploration of thehigh fascination photographs subtended a mean visualangle of 0.971, SD ¼70.071, independent t(48) ¼ �2.40,p ¼ 0.02.

The mean number of saccades was obtained for eachphotograph, averaged across participants, and then aver-aged for each category. A mean of 100.77 (SD ¼ 5.36)occurred in the high fascination category compared to amean of 102.07 (SD ¼ 4.87) in the low fascination. Thedifference was not significant, independent samples t-test,t(48) ¼ �0.86, p ¼ 0.39.

The mean number of fixations was obtained for eachphotograph, averaged across participants, and then aver-aged for each category. As hypothesized, significantly morefixations occurred in the low fascination than in the highfascination category, low fascination mean ¼ 7.70 (SD ¼0.85), vs. high fascination mean ¼ 4.86 (SD ¼ 1.34),inde-pendent samples t-test, t(48) ¼ �8.88, po0.001.

The next question is whether participants surveyeddifferent areas of the photographs, that is, whether thenumbers of fixations would be similar across different

sections of the photographs. Each photograph was dividedinto a matrix made up of three rows and four columns,with section 1 on the top left and section 12 on the lowerright, allowing us to examine where fixations occurredmost frequently and how fixations differed betweencategories. The mean number of fixations occurring ineach section was calculated for each photograph, averagedacross participants, and then averaged across eachcategory. These scores are provided in Fig. 3 and showwhere fixations were most and least frequent. The patternsare similar in both groups of photographs, with highnumbers of fixations occurring in the central part of thescreen (corresponding to sections 5–8). Consistent with theoverall difference in number of fixations, in seven of the 12sections, there were more fixations in low than highfascination photographs. Independent sample t-testsshowed that the mean number of fixations differedsignificantly between categories in section 5, t(48) ¼�3.03, po0.001, section 6, t(48) ¼ �3.62, po0.001, section7, t(48) ¼ �3.11, po0.001, section 8, t(48) ¼ �4.12,po0.001, section 9, t(48) ¼ �2.31, p ¼ 0.02, section 10,t(48) ¼ �2.12, p ¼ 0.03, and section 12, t(48) ¼ �3.30,po0.001; no significant differences occurred in section 1,t(48) ¼ �1.88, p ¼ 0.06, section 2, t(48) ¼ �2.01, p ¼ 0.05,section 3, t(48) ¼ 0.11, p ¼ 0.90, section 4, t(48) ¼ �0.26,p ¼ 0.78, or section 11, t(48) ¼ �1.18, p ¼ 0.24 (see Fig. 3).Thus, although overall fixations differed between the twocategories of photographs, the general patterns are similar,and not all sections were viewed more in the low than highfascination categories.

4. Discussion

Studies where eye movements were recorded during theviewing of ‘‘complex real scenes’’ are numerous, though inthe literature complex real scenes has meant artwork,drawings, computer simulations, etc. Apart from Gratzer

ARTICLE IN PRESSR. Berto et al. / Journal of Environmental Psychology 28 (2008) 185–191190

and McDowell’s (1971) study, where eye movements wererecorded during the viewing of natural landscape photo-graphs, there is no research to date that has used such kindof ecological material. Thus in the present study, photo-graphs (rather than drawings) of real outdoor environ-ments were used. This study used eye movementtechnology to ask whether and how viewing high fascina-tion photographs is different from viewing low fascinationphotographs. The hypothesis of this study was that highfascination photographs would engage effortless, involun-tary attention and would therefore be characterized by adifferent pattern of eye movements than low fascinationscenes. The results supported the hypothesis. In equalexploration times, we found that participants did not differin amount of movement (saccades) but did differ in howmuch area they covered (distance scores) and howfrequently they fixated on an aspect of the photograph,with low fascination photographs receiving higher scores(greater scrutiny). The analysis of fixations across thephotographic surfaces showed that the areas explored weresimilar in the two types of scenes, and although the numberof fixations tended to be higher for the low fascination thanhigh fascination scenes, the differences were not alwayssignificant. Fixations are a particularly important indica-tor, as they represent the amount of attention engagedwhen viewing a scene. The lower number of fixations forhigh fascination scenes indicates they were viewed with lesseffort. Thus, the viewing pattern for the high fascinationphotographs is consistent with Kaplan’s definition of ‘‘soft

fascination’’ in that participants scanned the nature scenesbroadly, but did not study carefully any particular aspects.

Attention restoration theory (Kaplan, 1995) states thatin attending to restorative environments, people can beattracted to interesting, fascinating patterns. While thismight appear to require directed attention, our eyemovement data suggest a different explanation. Thenumber of fixations is lower in the nature scenes, indicatingthat people do not pause long to study these attractivefeatures, but continue viewing other aspects of the scene.These are not distractions that need to be inhibited, butrather simply aspects of the scene to be viewed. This mayexplain why nature scenes are relatively more restorative.The inhibitory system is not engaged during the viewing ofnature scenes, instead, people shift easily from one featureto another, as would be expected if the scenes activate ‘‘softfascination.’’

Although this study provides initial evidence that eyemovements are different when viewing nature vs. urban-industrial scenes, there are certain limitations. The firstlimitation is that the study does not provide informationabout viewing such environments in the real world, wherehuman vision is active and dynamic, and eye and headcontribute together to perception (Henderson, Williams,Castelhano, & Falk, 2003). Perception is indeed not apassive process of registration but an active process ofinteraction between organism and environment (Hilgard,1982). Another limitation involves environmental complex-

ity that was not quantified objectively across environmen-tal categories; demonstrating the photographs were equalin complexity would give more strength to the results.A final limitation is that even though participants were notasked to perform a particular cognitive task, we cannot besure that they had no purpose guiding their exploration ofthese photographs. Their explorations may have beenguided by schema knowledge, such as objects likely to befound in a specific type of scene, where they might belocated, and spatial regularities associated with a scenecategory. One way that observers may handle environ-mental uncertainty is by using existing knowledge of theprobabilistic structure of the environment. Such top-downprocesses are known to be a major factor in acquisition ofvisual information (Shinoda, Hayhoe, & Shrivastava,2001). Thus, it is possible that the first saccade in a scenetakes the eyes in the likely direction of an expected target,whether or not the target is present, or whether a particularobject is likely to be found (Henderson et al., 2003).This is an exploratory study that does not claim to

explain completely how restorative environments areperceived. The study represents a new direction in researchon restorative environments, and further research is neededfor understanding the underlying mechanisms of restora-tiveness. Nevertheless the present study suggests that thereis a difference in how people view environments perceivedas fascinating vs. environments perceived as non-fascinat-ing. Our eye movement data suggest that different kinds ofattention are engaged for fascinating vs. non-fascinatingscenes (Kaplan, 1995). Results are consistent with Kaplan’sfascination hypothesis.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the invaluableassistance of Carol Werner for her many insights on thecontent. Thanks also to Clara Casco for her kindcooperation in the data analysis and to Terry Purcell forhis comments. Thanks also to the anonymous referees.

References

Berto, R. (1998). Rapporti tra restorativeness dei luoghi e preferenza

espressa. Unpublished Graduation Thesis, University of Padova.

Berto, R. (2005). Exposure to restorative environments helps restore

attentional capacity. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 25,

249–259.

Buswell, G. T. (1935). How people look at photographs: A study of the

psychology of perception in art. Chicago: University of Chigaco Press.

Carr, S., & Schissler, D. (1969). Perceptual selection and memory in the

view from the road. Environment and Behavior, 6, 7–35.

Corbetta, M. (1998). Frontoparietal cortical networks for directing

attention and the eye to visual locations: Identical, independent, or

overlapping neural system? Proceedings of the National Academy of

Sciences, 95, 831–838.

Culham, J., Brandt, S., Cavanagh, P., Kanwisher, N., Dale, A., & Tootell,

R. (1998). Cortical fMRI activation produced by attention tracking of

moving targets. Journal of Neurophysiology, 80, 2657–2670.

ARTICLE IN PRESSR. Berto et al. / Journal of Environmental Psychology 28 (2008) 185–191 191

Gratzer, M. A., & McDowell, R. D. (1971). Adaptation of an eye

movement recorder to esthetic environmental mensuration. Research

Report, 36, 3–29.

Hartig, T., Evans, G. W., Jamner, L. D., Davis, D., & Garling, T. (2003).

Tracking restoration in natural and urban settings. Journal of

Environmental Psychology, 23, 109–123.

Hayhoe, M., Land, M., & Shrivastava (1999). Coordination of eye and

hand in a normal environment. Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual

Science, 40, S380.

Henderson, J. M., Weeks, P. A., Jr., & Hollingworth, A. (1990). The

effects of semantic consistency on eye movements during complex

scene viewing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception

and Performance, 25(1), 210–228.

Henderson, J. M., Williams, C. C., Castelhano, M. S., & Falk, R. J.

(2003). Eye movements and picture processing during recognition.

Perception and Psychophysics, 65(5), 725–734.

Hernandez, B., Hidalgo, C., Berto, R., & Peron, E. (2001). The role of

familiarity on the restorative value of a place: Research on a Spanish

sample. IAPS Bulletin, 18, 22–24 [Special issue on environmental

cognition in memory of Mimma Peron].

Herzog, T. R. (1985). A cognitive analysis for waterscapes. Journal of

Environmental Psychology, 5, 225–241.

Herzog, T. R., Black, A. M., Fountaine, K. A., & Knotts, D. (1997).

Reflection and attentional recovery as distinct benefits of restorative

environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 17, 165–170.

Hilgard, E. R. (1982). The goals of perception. In S. Kaplan, & R. Kaplan

(Eds.), Humanscape: Environments for people. Ann Arbor, MI: Ulrich.

James, W. (1892). Psychology: The briefer course. New York: Holt.

Kaplan, S. (1978). Attention and fascination: The search for cognitive

clarity. In S. Kaplan, & R. Kaplan (Eds.), Humanscape: Environments

for People. Ann Arbor, MI: Ulrich.

Kaplan, S. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: Towards an integrative

framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 169–182.

Kaplan, S., & Kaplan, R. (1981). Cognition and the environment.

Functioning in an certain world. Ann Arbor, MI: Ulrich.

Kaplan, S., & Kaplan, R. (1989). The experience of nature: A psychological

perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Loftus, G. R., & Mackworth, N. H. (1978). Cognitive determinants of

fixation location during photograph viewing. Journal of Experimental

Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 4, 565–572.

Mackworth, N. H., & Morandi, A. J. (1988). The gaze selects informative

details within photographs. Perception and Psychophysics, 2,

547–552.

Navalparkkam, V., & Itti, L. (2005). Modeling the influence of task on

attention. Vision Research, 45, 205–231.

Purcell, A. T., Peron, E., & Berto, R. (2001). Why do preferences differ

between scene types? Environment & Behavior, 33(1), 93–106.

Rayner, K., & Pollatsek, A. (1992). Eye movements and scene perception.

Canadian Journal of Psychology, 46, 342–376.

Shinoda, H., Hayhoe, M. M., & Shrivastava, A. (2001). What control

attention in natural environments? Vision Research, 41, 3535–3545.

Tennessen, B., & Cimprich, B. (1995). Views to nature: Effects on

attention. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 77–85.

Ulrich, R. S. (1979). Visual landscape and psychological well-being.

Landscape Research, 4, 17–23.

Ulrich, R. S. (1981). Natural versus urban scenes. Some psychophysio-

logical effects. Environment and Behavior, 13(5), 523–556.

Ulrich, R. S., Simons, R. F., Losito, B. D., Fiorito, E., Miles, M. A., &

Zelston, M. (1991). Stress recovery during exposure to natural and

urban environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 11,

201–230.

Unema, P., Pannasch, S., Joos, M., & Velichkovsky, B. M. (2005). Time

course of information processing during scene perception: The

relationship between saccade amplitude and fixation duration. Visual

Cognition, 12(3), 473–494.

Yarbus, A. L. (1967). Eye movement and vision. New York: Plenum.