Visual Complexity and Children’s Art Engagement in Museum Settings: The Role of Audio Guidance

The present study examined whether visual complexity influences children’s visual engagement with artworks, while assessing the moderating role of audio guidance. Visual complexity, a multifaceted aspect of perception and aesthetic appreciation, is often defined through various components, namely contrast, structural irregularity, and asymmetry. Additionally, audio guidance in museums serves as cognitive scaffolding, designed to direct attention and support affective responses. Using a mixed experimental design at the Kunstpalast Museum in Düsseldorf, 39 children (aged 5–13) viewed a curated selection of artworks while receiving either traditional audio guidance, a child-tailored audio guide (Tonies), or no guidance. Visual engagement was measured via eye-tracking metrics, including fixation count, saccade count, time to first fixation, and pupil dilation, and analyzed using Linear Mixed Models, to detect interactions between visual complexity and audio guidance. Results indicated...Show moreThe present study examined whether visual complexity influences children’s visual engagement with artworks, while assessing the moderating role of audio guidance. Visual complexity, a multifaceted aspect of perception and aesthetic appreciation, is often defined through various components, namely contrast, structural irregularity, and asymmetry. Additionally, audio guidance in museums serves as cognitive scaffolding, designed to direct attention and support affective responses. Using a mixed experimental design at the Kunstpalast Museum in Düsseldorf, 39 children (aged 5–13) viewed a curated selection of artworks while receiving either traditional audio guidance, a child-tailored audio guide (Tonies), or no guidance. Visual engagement was measured via eye-tracking metrics, including fixation count, saccade count, time to first fixation, and pupil dilation, and analyzed using Linear Mixed Models, to detect interactions between visual complexity and audio guidance. Results indicated that higher visual complexity, particularly RMS contrast (lightness and color variability) and 2D fractal dimension (structural complexity), increased visual engagement and exploratory patterns, whereas symmetric artworks elicited more focused but less active exploration. Although audio guidance generally sustained engagement, Tonies presented no significant advantage over the classic narrative-driven guides. These findings have practical implications for museum curators, informing child-friendly exhibition designs that manage cognitive load, while contributing to the empirical aesthetics literature by extending complexity research beyond artificial stimuli to real artworks and child populations.Show less

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Visual Complexity and Children’s Art Engagement in Museum Settings: The Role of Audio Guidance