Humans exhibit colour vision variations due to genetic polymorphisms, with trichromacy being the most common, while some people are classified as dichromats. Whether genetic differences in colour vision affect the way of viewing complex images remains unknown. Here, we investigated how people with different colour vision focused their gaze on aesthetic paintings by eye-tracking while freely viewing digital rendering of paintings and assessed individual impressions through a decomposition analysis of adjective ratings for the images. Gaze concentrated areas among trichromats were more highly correlated than those among dichromats. However, compared to the brief dichromatic experience with the simulated images, there was little effect of innate colour vision differences on impressions. These results indicate that chromatic information is instructive as a cue for guiding attention, whereas the impression of each person is generated according to their own sensory experience and normalised through one’s own colour space.

Gaze data

Gaze data were acquired using Tobii Pro X2-60 (Tobii Technology AB, Danderyd, Sweden) at a sampling rate of 60 Hz during a 30 s viewing of each painting.

Impression data

Impression data were obtained as ratings for 23 adjective pairs after viewing each painting.

The presentation of the stimulus images, control of the gaze measurement device, and data acquisition were performed using a custom program in Psychtoolbox3, which was run in MATLAB (Mathworks, Natick, MA, USA).

Codes with extension "m" require the MATLAB environment. Codes with the extension "R" require the R statistical environment.

Different versions of MATLAB and R may affect the codes.

Octave can be used as an open-source alternative to MATLAB; however, its operation is not guaranteed.