Electrophysiological Indices of Processing Symmetry and Aesthetics

Abstract

Abstract. Evaluative aesthetic judgments and descriptive symmetry judgments were compared. Electrophysiological activity was recorded while participants judged the aesthetic value or the symmetry status of novel graphic black and white patterns. In order to experimentally separate judgment categorization processes and judgment report processes, participants were instructed to misreport their true actual judgment in half of the trials. Three effects found in a previous study were examined: (1) an early frontocentral effect for the evaluation of not-beautiful patterns reflecting an early impression formation, (2) a more pronounced ERP lateralization to the right for the aesthetic judgment task in comparison to the symmetry judgment task reflecting evaluative categorization, and (3) a sustained posterior effect for the visual analysis of symmetric patterns. In this study, (1) and (3) were replicated independent of the validity of the response, but (2) was affected by the validity, i.e., the effect was abolished in the false condition. Thus, results allowed further specification of cognitive processes involved in judgments of symmetry or aesthetics. Given present data, the ERP effects predominantly reflect judgment categorization and not judgment report.

ERP Evidence for Rapid Hedonic Evaluation of Logos

“…Rather, the data support the hypothesis that they reflect a sequential process manifest across several distinct stages or steps. For example, it has been proposed that aesthetic judgments of beauty can be decomposed into at least two distinct stages: an initial formation of one's impression of the attitude object at a featural or perceptual level, followed by a categorization of the object based on that analysis (e.g., Höfel & Jacobsen, 2007a, 2007b. Our data here indicate that hedonicrelated evaluations may operate in an analogous manner.…”

“…In particular, implicit evaluative responses in this time range are often construed as reflecting initial, perceptual-level evaluative responses to attitude objects (e.g., Näätänen, 1992), such as ''feature impression'' (Höfel & Jacobsen, 2007a, 2007b. If so, we wanted to address two follow-up questions with regard to these ''perceptual'' or ''early'' hedonic effects.…”

“…While identifying these myriad factors and how they interact is beyond the scope of our study, it nevertheless stands to reason that our understanding of how normative emotion-related evaluative responses bias visuocortical processing may not generalize to more multifactored and implicit evaluations such as hedonic ones (e.g., Silvia, 2005). Indeed, unlike judgments of affectively polarized stimuli, recent ERP evidence suggests that aesthetic judgments of ''beauty'' bias visuocortical processing only when these evaluations are made explicitly (Höfel & Jacobsen, 2007a, 2007b. Taken together, the available evidence thus suggests that although visuocortical processing is susceptible to at least some forms of implicit evaluative analysis, whether this includes implicit hedonic analysis of everyday visual images like logos, remains an open question.…”

“…If implicit hedonic evaluative responses can bias visuocortical processing, it predicted that effects should be manifest in one or more ERP time windows that have been shown to be sensitive to other forms of visual evaluative responding: 150-200 msec and 200-400 msec windows associated with more perceptually driven aspects of visual-sensory evaluation (e.g., Höfel & Jacobsen, 2007a, 2007bNäätänen, 1992), and the 400-600 msec window capturing the LPP, an index of deeper or more contemplative aspects of evaluative analysis (e.g., Cuthbert et al, 2000;Ito & Cacioppo, 2000;Cacioppo et al, 1996;Crites et al, 1995;Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994). Given this general mapping between the timing of an evaluative effect and the level of evaluative analysis involved, not only could we identify whether implicit hedonic evaluations actually bias visuocortical processing, but we could also gain insight into what levels of processing may be affected.…”

Electrophysiological correlates of aesthetic processing of webpages: a comparison of experts and laypersons

“…More in line with these assumptions are the results by Höfel & Jacobsen (2007a) and Höfel & Jacobsen (2007b). They observed a differentiation of ERPs to aesthetic and unaesthetic picture starting at around 300 ms after stimulus onset (see also Jacobsen & Höfel, 2003 using the same stimuli but a different task for a similar time pattern).…”