When individuals encounter an environment, they psychologically perceive and process physical characteristics, especially forms and structures, of the environment and infer meanings of the environment, such as, condition, role, status, and function of the environment, that hide behind its facial characteristics. The process of inferring the visually hidden meanings is named 'environmental inference'. The present study aimed to examine environmental inference to distinguish between Japanese and English private garden scenes by adopting the frame of Brunswik's lens model approach. Participants consisted of 44 university students, and stimuli included 34 private garden pictures, 17 Japanese and 17 English ones. The participants were presented the pictures one by one in random order and asked to rate them on 17 rating scales. Then, they were given all picture set and asked to distinguish between Japanese gardens and English gardens. Results showed that 1) Japanese and English gardens differed in perceptual/physical, affective and cognitive characteristics; 2) distinguished gardens also had differences in the almost same characteristics revealed above; then 3) participants inferred the nationality of the gardens in more than 80 percent accuracy. Finally, limitations of the present study and potential future studies were discussed.

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In this study, we developed the cross-ectional indication method that is focused on the cross-section which enable to represent of the spatial composition visually, and we made an experiment on 16 areas and 61 view point fields of landscape-architecture by using this method. The purpose of this study is to extract the spatial composition elements of landscape-architecture and to clarify the structure of the spatial composition quantitatively by applying the cross-sectional indication method. Furthermore, the purpose is extended to clarify the relation between psychological quantities and spatial composition elements through the application of 8 factors of psychological quantities based on psychological experiment. The results are summarized as follows; (1)As a result of the cross-ectional indication method analysis, it was found that there are 43 composition elements and we classified into 5 spatial elements on landscape-architecture. (2)Each composition element shows a different character of which degree to the impressing and the consciousness. (3)lt can be classified into 4 types according to proportion of indication rate of 5 spatial elements. (4)Also it can be classified into 3 types according to the reduction tendency to indication rate of elements which charactrize on each viewpoint fields. (5)As a result of correlation analysis, relations between spatial composition elements and 8 psychological factors can be explicated quantitatively. In conclusion, the results of this study will show the useful guide for planning and designing of landscape

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