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J e a n n a N i k o l o v - R a m i r e z . M E i : C o g S c i 2 0 1 5 S u p e r v i s o r : T. S c h ö b e r l . A p r i l 2 0 1 5
PERCEPTION OF ART & NEUROAESTHETICS
© Jeanna Nikolov-Ramirez
OUTLINE
• Connection to my interest
• Historical overview • Aesthetic experience
definition • Key findings • Pending questions • Literature
Key findings 1. Temporal Issues 2. Content vs. Style 3. Interplay Cognition &
Emotion 4. Aesthetic Emotions 5. Role of Context 6. Neural Underpinnings
CONNECTION TO MY RESEARCH INTERESTS
• Appraisal of Images • Visual Perception • Eye Tracking • Aesthetics and Constitution of Meaning • Epistemological surplus of Form and Aesthetics • Interplay between Cognition and Emotion • Images vs Text/Type
REFLECTIONS ON PAPER
• Leder, H., & Nadal, M. (2014). Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments: The aesthetic episode–Developments and challenges in empirical aesthetics. British Journal of Psychology, 105(4), 443-464.
© Jeanna Nikolov-Ramirez, Slow Art Day Vienna 2015
AUTHORS
• Helmut Leder, University Vienna (Psychology) • Marcos Nadal, University Vienna (Psychology)
• Psychological Aesthetics • Neuroaesthetics • Evolution of the mind
LEDER ET AL.’S MODEL OF AESTHETIC APPRECIATION
FIVE MAIN PROCESSING STAGES
1. Perception 2. Implicit memory integration 3. Explicit classification 4. Cognitive Mastering 5. Evaluation
Development driven by: • Time course of aesthetic episode • Role of content and style • Inter-relation of cognitive and affective processes
BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
• 1876: Gustav Theodor Fechner, Vorschule der Ästhetik
• Early 1900: Gestalt theorists (Lipps, Stumpf, Bühler) • 1970ies: Daniel Berlyne, Psychobiological aesthetics • Early years of 21st century: technological progress
improved conditions under which art could be studied in lab
• Possibility to study concurrently behavioral, physiological and eye-movement data
• Advances in Neuroscience and Neuroimaging: investigation of neural underpinnings
CONTEXT: WHAT MAKES AN EXPERIENCE AESTHETIC?
3 major aspects: (Shusterman 1997, Bergeron and Lopes 2012):
1. Has an evaluative dimension - valuation of object 2. Phenomenological, affective dimension 3. Semantic dimension – meaningful
Aesthetic triad–proposal: (Chatterjee and Vartanian 2014 review of neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies)
1. Sensory-motor 2. Emotion-valuation 3. Meaning-knowledge neural systems
No reason to believe that all three dimensions required in every instance of aesthetic experience.
PREMISES
• Art and Aesthetics overlap but not identical • Ideal testing ground for theories of emotion,
cognition and perception
TIME COURSE AND TEMPORAL ORDER
• “It could even be argued that what makes an experience aesthetic is its long extension in time, which allows for several cycles of feedback and feedforward influence among processes related to perception, cognition and emotion.” (p. 449) • Content processed with presentations of 10ms • Processing of style with presentations of 50ms • Average time people spend in front of artworks 11-27s
(depending on studies) – correlation with Nr of artworks on display?
CONTENT VS STYLE
• Correlation between style, depiction and empathy promising field of study for the future!
• “There is some evidence that brushstrokes elicit responses in the perceiver, which correspond in direction to motor activation in the direction of the brush (Taylor, Witt, & Grimaldi, 2012).”
• Simultaneously performing hand movements that resemble the artist’s made while creating paintings can enhance liking for paintings of corresponding style
• Experts use art styles to classify artworks according to similarity while non-experts don’t
INTERPLAY BETWEEN COGNITION AND EMOTION
• Emotional states under-specified, problems with measurement
• People can enjoy disgusting objects when they believe they are artworks, though they are still experienced as disgusting
• Differences in cognitive processing units in experts modulate the stronger than initial emotional responses
AESTHETIC EMOTIONS
• Dispute: prototypical aesthetic emotions, aesthetic awe?
• Aesthetic and common emotions mediated by same mechanisms?
• Appraisal as key mechanism: Interest, confusion, surprise (knowledge emotions)
• Elicited in terms of • Novelty • Complexity • Familiarity • Coping potential
• Goal-incongruence, harmfulness: anger, disgust, contempt
• Self-conscious emotions: pride, shame, embarassment
ROLE OF CONTEXT
• John Dewey: ‘Experience is a matter of the interaction of organism with its environment, an environment that is human as well as physical, that includes the materials of tradition and institutions as well as local surroundings’ (Dewey, 1934, p. 256).
• Presentation format influences interest and liking • Tröndle et al. (2012): experience of art in museums
is closely related to visitor’s movement patterns through the curated space
NEURAL UNDERPINNINGS
4 Main Conclusions: 1. aesthetic appreciation as a complex interaction
among perceptual, cognitive and affective processes. 2. no localized seat for art in the brain; that our
experience of art emerges from the interaction among the nodes of a broadly distributed network of cortical and subcortical brain regions (Cela-Conde et al. , 2013; Chatterjee, 2014; Vessel et al. , 2012).
3. None of these brain regions is specialized in responding to art alone
4. Resilient to Alzheimer’s: Art can be appreciated in the absence of explicit memory integration
EVOLUTIONARY FOUNDATIONS
• “Most hypotheses about the evolution of art and aesthetics assume that they are adaptations, that is to say, traits that endow us with specific selective advantages and that emerged through natural selection owing to those benefits (Lauder, Leroi, & Rose, 1993)”
• “Aesthetic fitness” and aesthetic judgment as natural part of mate choice and social cognition?
• Claim; Art does not confer advantages to individuals, but to groups; …enhances the fitness of groups in competition for resources with other groups.
• “by promoting engagement in group activities and rituals, art’s main selective advantage was to reinforce social cooperation and group cohesion.”
CURRENT RESEARCH STATUS
• Four challenges faced today: • Understanding the emotional component of the aesthetic
episode • Role of context • Neural underpinnings of art and aesthetics • Evolutionary origin
PENDING QUESTIONS
• “…it is foreseeable that in the next decade genetic imaging will be used to identify genomic variations related to emotional or cognitive processes underlying aesthetic appreciation. It might even be possible to characterize neural connectivity patterns associated with such processes in participants that differ in terms of their genetic makeup…”
FURTHER LITERATURE ON PSYCHOLOGICAL AESTHETICS
• Allesch, C. G. (1987). Geschichte der psychologischen Ästhetik. Göttingen: Hogrefe.
• Allesch, C. G. (2006). Einführung in die psychologische Ästhetik. Wien: WUV.
• Ash, M. G. (1995). Gestalt Psychology in German culture, 1890-1967. Cambridge,University Press: Cambridge, MA.
• Benetka, G. (1995). Psychologie in Wien. Wien: WUV.
• Benetka, G. (2002). Denkstile der Psychologie. Wien: WUV.
• Berlyne, D. E. (1974). Konflikt, Erregung, Neugier. Zur Psychologie der kognitiven Motivation. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
• Brunswik, E. (1952). The conceptual Framework of Psychology. (International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Volume 1, Number 10). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Bühler, K. (1913). Die Gestaltwahrnehmungen. Stuttgart: Spemann.
• Bühler, K. (1934). Sprachtheorie. Jena: Gustav Fischer.
• Fischer, K. R. & Stadler, F. (1997). Wahrnehmung und Gegenstandswelt. Zum Lebenswerk von Egon Brunswik (1903-1955), (Hrsg.) Band 4 der Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis. New York: Springer.
• Fleming, D. & Bailyn, B. (1969). The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America,1930-1960. Cambridge/Mass: Harvard University Press.
• Gombrich, E., Hochberg, J. & Black, M. (1977). Kunst, Wahrnehmung, Wirklichkeit. Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
• Gombrich, E. H. (1986). Kunst und Illusion. Zur Psychologie der bildlichen Darstellung (1960). Stuttgart: Belser.
• Leder, H. (2002). Explorationen in der Bildästhetik. Lengerich: Papst.
• Leder, H. & Vitouch, O. (2006). Kunst- und Musikpsychologie. In: Kurt Pawlik (Hrsg.) Handbuch der Psychologie. Heidelberg: Springer, 895-901.
• Lück, H. E. & Miller, R. (2005). Illustrierte Geschichte der Psychologie (Hrsg.). Weinheim und Basel: Beltz.
• Mandler, G. (2007). A history of modern experimental psychology: From Wundt and James to cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Metzger, W. (1953). Gesetze des Sehens. Frankfurt/Main: Kramer.
