Abstracts from the 11th Visual Science of Art Conference (VSAC)Wiesbaden, Germany, August 21st–23rd, 2025

Background. We investigated how aesthetic judgements and sensory sensitivity influence people’s gaze and attention to visual art. Previous research has shown that people tend to look longer at art works they find aesthetically pleasing, but for a large part, these findings have been obtained in controlled laboratory environments. Moreover, little is known about how individual differences in sensory sensitivity may moderate this relationship. Method. 61 participants, equipped with a wearable eye-tracker, looked at visual art works in an art gallery. After their visit, participants evaluated each art work on aesthetic dimensions (e.g., beauty, liking, emotional impact, complexity), and filled in the Glasgow Sensory Questionnaire (GSQ) to provide a measure of self-reported sensory sensitivity. Research question. Do people’s aesthetic judgements predict visual attention to art works, and is visual attention moderated by sensory sensitivity? We hypothesized that 1) higher aesthetic judgements will correlate with longer total and average fixation durations, and 2) more sensory sensitive visitor’s will show increased total and average fixation durations when looking at art. First results. We found a significant positive correlation between subjective beauty/liking judgements and total fixation duration (ρ = .12, p = .024), but no significant correlation was found between subjective beauty/liking and average fixation duration. Sensory sensitivity positively correlated with total fixation duration (ρ = .18, p = .001), and subjective beauty/liking correlated with sensory sensitivity (ρ = .12, p = .024). Discussion. Initial results show that subjective judgements of beauty/liking and sensory sensitivity predict visual attention to art works in a gallery environment. We are currently working on additional analyses on how other aesthetic judgements (e.g., emotional impact, interest, complexity) influence measures of visual attention, and how sensory sensitivity affect these relationships.