A reflection and summary of the key findings and challenges in the field of Perception of Art and Aesthetics, based on Leder et al

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. AUTHORS
• Helmut Leder, University Vienna (Psychology)
• Marcos Nadal, University Vienna (Psychology)
• Psychological Aesthetics
• Neuroaesthetics
• Evolution of the mind

6. LEDER ET AL.’S MODEL OF AESTHETIC APPRECIATION

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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.

10. PREMISES
• Art and Aesthetics overlap but not identical
• Ideal testing ground for theories of emotion,
cognition and perception

11. 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?

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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.”

18. 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

19. 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…”

20. 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.

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THANK YOU! Questions?
© Jeanna Nikolov-Ramirez, Slow Art Day Vienna 2015
Jeanna.nikolov@gmail.com