Important information about tourism in Costa Rica - Florida

Where do people spend the most time looking at Sargent's Madame X? We study the face and hands as expected, but we also look at her chin, neck, and striking decolletage.

Left: John Singer Sargent, Madame Gautreau
Right: Eyetracking heatmap

Dan Hill, the vision scientist who did this study, says: "The mind's eye can go anywhere. In reality, faces command attention. What gets noticed first, typically? The answer is faces and what's in the vicinity, namely people's heads."

Thomas Gainsborough, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews

Hill says, "Faces matter. After twenty-plus years of conducting market-research studies, I can tell you most definitively that nothing changes the underlying pattern. If there's a face involved, as much as seventy percent or more of all the gaze activity goes to the face(s) present."
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Previously on the blog: 
Eye Tracking and Composition
Men, Women, and Eye Tracking
Images from the book "First Blush: People's Intuitive Reactions to Famous Art" by Dan Hill