Spatial Predictors of Eye Movement in a Gallery Setting

The impact of space on our behaviour and cognition is not yet fully understood. The problem is particularly interesting in the context of art galleries, where the spatial context of artefacts is probably the most impactful curatorial tool available, which greatly contributes to the visitors' final experience. Space Syntax - a set of methods for quantitative description of spatial environments - was used to extract various properties of objects' locations from a gallery's layout. Among other variables, eye-tracking measures were obtained from participants freely exploring the space. The results of our analyses show that the spatial arrangement of objects is highly correlated with the number of glimpses occurring at given location. The implications of this are relevant to researchers in real life eye-tracking studies interested in setting up highly controllable experimental spatial environments