The role of the global properties of a natural scene in the judgment of restorativeness and aesthetic preference.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the relation between some basic global properties of a scene, perceived restorativeness (i.e., the sense of replenishing lost resources), and aesthetic preferences. The literature has shown that humans tend to aesthetically prefer images that generate a high sense of restorativeness . It has also been shown that natural environments are perceived as more restorative than urban environments and that the former are actually able to promote the recovery of physical and psychological resources . The link between perceived restorativeness and aesthetic preference can be explained by the fact that humans tend to prefer environments that show that they possess useful and beneficial resources for survival and development . Some authors also argue that humans are able to distinguish efficiently, at first glance, whether an environment is natural or not because they identify some basic global properties in the scene that can signal important structural and functional features of the scene . Considering the above, it is intended to test, by presenting a sample of subjects to a pairwise comparison of images, whether the presence in natural scenes of certain visually perceived basic global properties (i.e., Openness, Expansion, Main depth, Temperature, Transience, Concealment, and Navigability) is able, at least partially, to elicit a sense of restorativeness and aesthetic preference. The global properties and aesthetic preference will be measured by means of eight unidimensional scalings, and the perception of restorativeness using PRS.