# Using Eye Tracking to Reveal Responses to the Built Environment and Its Constituents
## 4 Discussion
Results from the second category, _texture_, defined here as visually complex surfaces, again indicated a visual attraction to textured facades over ones that were smooth and flat or had repeated basic patterns. This applied to both textures like rock/brick wall surfaces in Study 3 and a wall with painted patterns in Study 7. A special case in this category, with the same results, was the proclivity for looking at the Milan Cathedral in Italy over a blanker, simplified version of the building in Study 6 (first published and scanned with 3M's Visual Attention Software, with similar results in [5]). Here, the preferred version possessed a highly ornamental facade, whose fractal properties confer a privileged state in terms of perceptual fluency [15; 16] and make for a more stress-relieving sight, than a repetitive pattern [12; 13], as already discussed. The presence of fenestration would typically result in shorter TTFF and longer dwell times, as shown in Studies 5 and 6, whereas in the category Eye--and face-like patterns, whether on a spoon or a facade, a simple face-like pattern suggesting two eyes and a mouth, drew viewers to its area immediately; this pattern also received the most attention (Studies 5 and 7). Viewers also spent more dwell time on face-like images. When comparing natural vs. artificial environments in Studies 2, 4 and 7, dwell time went for more than 50% of the testing interval to the natural scene. In the one instance where this did not happen, and viewers favored the manmade scene, 20 percent of the image, however, featured natural elements, including a tree and blue sky. In some of the tests, the artificial environment was a blank wall, as a reference to the study that had shown improved recovery from surgery for patients whose hospital room had windows looking out on a natural scene, over those in rooms with windows facing a blank wall [17]. Looking at the average values per category, TTFF is always shorter for images with organized complexity (except for the natural vs. artificial category, for which it is the same) and dwell time is always longer for the images with organized complexity. Out of these, in two-tailed Students' \(t\)-tests, none of the TTFF comparisons gave \(p\) values of 0.05 or lower, while the dwell time in four out of five categories (again with the exception of natural vs. artificial) the \(p\) value was lower than 0.05, and three of those it was \(p\) < 0.01. The lack of what is commonly called \"statistical significance\" in some of these findings, should not detract from their importance; the trend is clear, and we should not forget that a certain \(p\) value represents a probability, not a cut-off point, as it is often thought of [31]. In addition, given the obvious trend, we might expect that the \(p\) value would further decrease if the sample was larger, which would result in smaller standard error. Results from these studies reveal our bias to fixate on detail, visual complexity, face-like and fractal geometries. Certainly, documenting an initial gaze attraction does not necessarily imply that the subject of this attraction will be deemed to be more appealing, and the results of these, or any other biometric studies that do not incorporate some measure of valence, are not enough by themselves to lead us to conclusions about preference. However, there is extensive literature on the connection between organized complexity and aesthetic preference, perceptual fluency and psychophysiological benefit (see introduction). Also, some of the photographic material used here has already been assessed for preference in other studies, with the preferred images being the same as those that scored higher in the present work. Hence, while we cannot claim to have assessed preference, we can say that we have found that images which scored favorably in the tests presented here, were images that incorporated those same features that are associated with aesthetic preference.