Abstract
The present study intends to prove the hypothesis that the evaluation of “restfulness” of a room depends on how it looks closer to observer's schemata. The scheme for a certain room in this study is defined as a preoccupied image of the room which is created by one's own experience, knowledge and cultural background. It serves as a guide for getting information from the environment. It is not constant but changes according to new experiences. We are accustomed to a new environment by changing our schemata. We conducted an experiment, in which 28 subjects were asked to evaluate 35 photographs of various home interior spaces according to its “restfulness” and to judge their similarity to one's own image of one of such rooms as living rooms, dining rooms, Japanese style rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms. Two kinds of modified stimuli (line drawing and color palettes) produced from the photographs were also used for the similar experiment. An analysis of the individual subject's responses revealed that the hypothesis was generally supported: the subjective “restfulness” of a room depended on how it looked closer to observer's image, and even if the score of evaluation differs among the subjects, each subject evaluated the interior space according to one's own schemata. It was also noted that the schemata for a certain room were more shared than the others.
