Effect of Title on Eye-Movement Exploration of Cubist Paintings by Fernand Léger

Franklin et al (1993, Leonardo 26 103–108) reported that title information influenced the interpretation of paintings but not the way observers explore and look at the paintings; in their study subjects used a hand pointer to indicate where they looked. We used eye-movement recording and examined the effect of title on eye-movement exploration of nonrealistic cubist paintings giving rise to free interpretation. Three paintings by Fernand Léger were used: The Wedding contained high density of small fragments of real human faces, limbs, or arbitrary fragments mixed with large plane surfaces; The Alarm Clock consisted of arbitrary fragments creating perception of a person; Contrast of Forms contained forms and cylinders. Different groups of naive subjects explored paintings without knowing the title (spontaneous condition), with the instruction to invent a title (active condition), and after announcement of the authentic title (driven condition). Exploration time was unrestricted and eye movements were recorded by Chronos video-oculography.

Fixation duration was found to increase in the driven condition relative to active condition; such increase occurred for all paintings. In contrast, fixation-duration variability remained stable over all title conditions. Saccade amplitude increased in the driven condition for Contrast of Forms. Increase of fixation duration and of saccade size are attributed to additional cognitive analysis, ie search fitting between the title and the painting. When comparing paintings within each title condition, The Wedding produced different results than the other paintings: longer exploration time (in spontaneous condition), higher fixation duration variability (in spontaneous and driven conditions), but smaller saccade sizes (in active and driven conditions). The differences are attributed to visual aspects (high density of small fragments) but also to complex semantic analysis of multiple segments of faces and limbs contained by this painting.

Spatial distribution of fixation time was highly selective, with a preponderance of the central area that was the most fixated for all paintings and all title conditions. In the driven condition, however, loci of most frequent fixations were different than in the other conditions from the first 5 s; particularly for The Alarm Clock the title drove the eyes rapidly on the inconspicuous fragment of the clock. Our findings go against Franklin's conclusions. We conclude that title information influences both physiological parameters of eye movements and the distribution of fixation time over different selected areas of the painting.