Attractive Stepping Stones Landscapes: Preference for Stone Height Variation Appears to Be Age Independent

An earlier study on the attractiveness of stepping stones configurations revealed that children like variation in stone height better than variation in stone size or gap width. In the present study, we conducted two experiments to examine whether this preference is found also in young and older adults. In Experiment 1, participants stepped freely in a standardized configuration, and three configurations with either height, size or gap width variation. Most interestingly, adults judged playgrounds with variation in stone height as most fun and beautiful, suggesting that the preference for variation in height is indeed age independent. In Experiment 2, we compared the configuration with only height variation with three configurations in which variation in height was combined with variation in stone size or gap width, or both. Although we found no significant differences among the configurations in the older adults, young adults judged the combination of height with size and gap width variation as more fun and esthetically appealing than the configuration with only height variation. The implications of our findings for playground research and designers are discussed.