Perceived cognitive challenge predicts eye movements while viewing contemporary paintings

Abstract

Contemporary art is often challenging for the viewer, especially when it violates classic rules of representation. Also, viewers usually have little knowledge about this type of art, making its reception even more difficult. Our main research question was how the cognitive challenge associated with contemporary art affects eye movement. In particular, we aimed to assess the impact on eye movements of (a) object‐related cognitive challenge in terms of image properties (syntactic and semantic violations) and (b) subject‐related cognitive challenge (composite subjective estimate of image inconsistency, ambiguity, and complexity). The eye movements of expert and naive participants were recorded while they freely viewed digital copies of contemporary paintings (four groups of five paintings each, differing in presence of semantic and syntactic violations). We found that neither violations nor art expertise alone predicted eye movements, although perceived, subjectively experienced cognitive challenge did. In particular, subject‐related cognitive challenge was associated with an increase in visual exploration (longer and more numerous fixations, bigger area of exploration, longer viewing time). The roles of object‐related and subject‐related indicators of cognitive challenge in perception of contemporary art are discussed.

Titles and Semantic Violations Affect Eye Movements When Viewing Contemporary Paintings

“…Therefore, we can only speculate on the possible direction of the relationship between semantic violations/inconsistencies in titles and eye movements. Given that ambiguities make the processing more effortful (Ganczarek et al, 2020;Szubielska et al, 2021a) we could expect longer fixations, smaller saccade amplitudes and shorter durations. However, if we consider that semantic violations are related to multiple visual cues spread in different areas of paintings, we could also hypothesize that the saccade amplitudes will increase (Goldberg et al, 2002).…”

“…Also, they found that artworks' ambiguity predicted viewing time differently depending on the context: ambiguity was a positive predictor of viewing times in museums, but a negative one in a laboratory setting (Brieber et al, 2014). However, in a different study (in a laboratory setting) a positive relationship between subjectively experienced cognitive challenge (compound measure of ambiguity, complexity and inconsistency) and fixation durations, area of exploration and viewing time was found (Ganczarek et al, 2020). Therefore, longer careful fixations over large parts of paintings may be related to higher liking and greater understanding via a need to cognitively master artworks.…”

“…Moreover, contemporary art introduces disfluency as a method of expression in which various forms of uncertainty, indeterminacy or strangeness are expected and appreciated (Bullot and Rolf, 2013). Art scientists are trying to capture some aspects of this complex phenomenon, appreciating the fact that ambiguity is a broad category, by using terms as semantic instability (Muth and Carbon, 2016), ambiguity (Jakesch et al, 2017), semantic inconsistencies (Markey et al, 2019) or semantic violations (Pietras and Ganczarek, 2018;Ganczarek et al, 2020;Szubielska et al, 2021a) to address the challenge which artworks present to viewers. In the present study we use the latter term, i.e., semantic violations to name a case in which a visual scene contains atypical objects (with no reference to the global meaning of the scene) or there are unusual relationships between objects in the scene.…”

“…Moreover, art might create a safe environment to experience ambiguity with positive affect, contrary to real life situations, in which ambiguity is often perceived as more threatening (see Jakesch et al, 2017). In fact, it seems that ambiguity in art may be expected and guide perception thus causing intense processing of semantic violations that are often appreciated by the viewers (e.g., Muth and Carbon, 2013;Jakesch et al, 2017;Ganczarek et al, 2020, but see Szubielska et al, 2021a.…”

Aristotle's dream: Evolutionary and neural aspects of aesthetic communication in the arts

“…Art implies to see beyond physical reality, and perceive (implicitly or explicitly) the hidden structures or intents lying behind (Bao, Yang, et al, 2017;Rogala, Bajno, & Wróbel, 2020): this could be demonstrated by the observation that viewers are able to identify the original color or orientation of abstract paintings (Bao, Yang, et al, 2017;Lelièvre & Neri, 2019;Lindauer, 1987;Mather, 2012) and even the original perspective of portraits (Wang & Bao, 2020). Hidden syntax-like structures (or more generally, hierarchical structures) have been proposed for music (London, 2002;Patel, 2003;Pöppel, 1989;Wittmann & Pöppel, 1999), poetry (Teng et al, 2020;Turner & Pöppel, 1988;, and even visual arts (Ganczarek, Pietras, & Rosiek, 2020). This process would find its resemblance in perceiving the hierarchical structure of language and making pragmatic inferences.…”