Poster Session: Visual discomfort in the everyday environment

Visual discomfort describes an aversive subjective experience characterised by perceptual distortions, blurred vision, diplopia, pain in the eyes, headache and/or nausea. Previous laboratory studies have found that levels of visual discomfort can be predicted from some statistical properties of scenes, including the spectral slope (e.g. Penacchio & Wilkins, 2015) and colour contrast (Juricevic et al. 2010; Penacchio et al. 2021). Lighting flicker (e.g. Yoshimoto et al., 2017) and colour temperature (e.g. Kakitsuba 2015) have also been shown to trigger discomfort. We investigated everyday occurrences of visual discomfort using a visual survey method. Participants (N = 36) captured scenes which they found to be visually uncomfortable within a university library. Participants gave a narrative and discomfort rating for each image. We also surveyed the lighting in the photographed areas, measuring flicker and the spectral power distribution of the illumination. Analysis showed some support for the importance of the image statistical features identified in laboratory studies, although there was no interaction between these features and lighting flicker or colour temperature. Qualitative analysis of participant narratives revealed that experiences of discomfort were attributed to low-level features (e.g. pattern, contrast), but also structural features (e.g. depth, disorganisation). These results provide new insights into the causes of visual discomfort in the everyday environment.