What is it about Picasso? Infants' categorical and discriminatory abilities in the visual arts.

Cacchione, Trix; Möhring, Wenke; Bertin, Evelyn

doi:10.1037/a0024129

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Thus, it is clear that infants do show a keen ability to both discriminate and prefer certain art to other art, and this preference is likely due to an attraction to certain visual elements. We hope to expand on Cacchione et al (2011) by providing a more rigorously controlled study, exploring infant and adult preferences for original over systematically altered nonrepresentational art.…”

Section: Studies Of Infant Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, in the first article, to date, that has explored infant perception of visual art, Cacchione, Mohring, and Bertin (2011), from the University of Zurich, tested infants' ability to categorize paintings based on genre-impressionist compared with cubist. They found that infants were able to discriminate and categorize paintings by Monet from paintings by Picasso.…”

Section: Studies Of Infant Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The baby as beholder: Adults and infants have common preferences for original art.

Krentz¹,

Earl²

2013

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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The field of experimental aesthetics and neuroaesthetics has explored the contributions of both objective and subjective factors in the appreciation for art. This cross-sectional study attempted to distinguish these factors by comparing adult and infant preferences for nonrepresentational artistic masterworks in their original and altered forms. Using a forced-choice paradigm for adults, and a preferential-looking paradigm for 6- to 10-month-old infants, we found that both populations preferred the original art, especially when complexity and contrast were reduced in the altered versions. Neither of the populations preferred the original art when the pattern was disrupted. Infants, but not the adults, preferred the originals that retained compositional balance, and adults, but not infants, preferred the artworks with intact focal points. In sum, our results demonstrate that appreciation for the objective features of artworks, especially complexity and contrast, are biologically driven, likely through experience-expectant brain growth, and remain stable throughout life.

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Section: Studies Of Infant Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Studies Of Infant Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The baby as beholder: Adults and infants have common preferences for original art.

Krentz¹,

Earl²

2013

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In children aesthetic appreciation also depends on their level of neurocognitive development, which will limit the aspects of the artwork and intentions of the artist that they are able to process and understand (see Callaghan and Rochat, 2003 ). For example, aesthetic appreciation in infants who are too young (<1 year) to understand the representational nature of images is strongly influenced by the color and the visual pattern of the artwork, as measured by their allocation of attention (Cacchione et al, 2011 ). Once children understand the dual representational nature of pictures (i.e., that a picture is both an object itself and a symbol of something else; DeLoache and Burns, 1994 ) subject matter becomes more important in aesthetic appreciation (Gordon, 1952 ; Machotka, 1966 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Shared Liking of Representational but not Abstract Art in Primary School Children and Their Justifications for Liking

Rodway

Kirkham

Schepman

et al. 2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Understanding how aesthetic preferences are shared among individuals, and its developmental time course, is a fundamental question in aesthetics. It has been shown that semantic associations, in response to representational artworks, overlap more strongly among individuals than those generated by abstract artworks and that the emotional valence of the associations also overlaps more for representational artworks. This valence response may be a key driver in aesthetic appreciation. The current study tested predictions derived from the semantic association account in a developmental context. Twenty 4-, 6-, 8- and 10-year-old children (n = 80) were shown 20 artworks (10 representational, 10 abstract) and were asked to rate each artwork and to explain their decision. Cross-observer agreement in aesthetic preferences increased with age from 4–8 years for both abstract and representational art. However, after age 6 the level of shared appreciation for representational and abstract artworks diverged, with significantly higher levels of agreement for representational than abstract artworks at age 8 and 10. The most common justifications for representational artworks involved subject matter, while for abstract artworks formal artistic properties and color were the most commonly used justifications. Representational artwork also showed a significantly higher proportion of associations and emotional responses than abstract artworks. In line with predictions from developmental cognitive neuroscience, references to the artist as an agent increased between ages 4 and 6 and again between ages 6 and 8, following the development of Theory of Mind. The findings support the view that increased experience with representational content during the life span reduces inter-individual variation in aesthetic appreciation and increases shared preferences. In addition, brain and cognitive development appear to impact on art appreciation at milestone ages.

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“…In addition, like adults, 6-month-old infants favor abstract art with contrast and complexity intact ( Krentz and Earl, 2013 ). And although infants do not always have the same visual aesthetic values as adults, babies still have clear preferences ( Cacchione et al, 2011 ; Taylor et al, 2013 ). Similar results are obtained in the domain of music.…”

Section: What Are Aesthetic Values?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Amount of Information Support Aesthetic Values?

Grzywacz

Aleem

2022

Front. Neurosci.

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Obtaining information from the world is important for survival. The brain, therefore, has special mechanisms to extract as much information as possible from sensory stimuli. Hence, given its importance, the amount of available information may underlie aesthetic values. Such information-based aesthetic values would be significant because they would compete with others to drive decision-making. In this article, we ask, “What is the evidence that amount of information support aesthetic values?” An important concept in the measurement of informational volume is entropy. Research on aesthetic values has thus used Shannon entropy to evaluate the contribution of quantity of information. We review here the concepts of information and aesthetic values, and research on the visual and auditory systems to probe whether the brain uses entropy or other relevant measures, specially, Fisher information, in aesthetic decisions. We conclude that information measures contribute to these decisions in two ways: first, the absolute quantity of information can modulate aesthetic preferences for certain sensory patterns. However, the preference for volume of information is highly individualized, with information-measures competing with organizing principles, such as rhythm and symmetry. In addition, people tend to be resistant to too much entropy, but not necessarily, high amounts of Fisher information. We show that this resistance may stem in part from the distribution of amount of information in natural sensory stimuli. Second, the measurement of entropic-like quantities over time reveal that they can modulate aesthetic decisions by varying degrees of surprise given temporally integrated expectations. We propose that amount of information underpins complex aesthetic values, possibly informing the brain on the allocation of resources or the situational appropriateness of some cognitive models.

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What is it about Picasso? Infants' categorical and discriminatory abilities in the visual arts.

Cited by 9 publications

References 36 publications

The baby as beholder: Adults and infants have common preferences for original art.

The baby as beholder: Adults and infants have common preferences for original art.

The Development of Shared Liking of Representational but not Abstract Art in Primary School Children and Their Justifications for Liking

Does Amount of Information Support Aesthetic Values?

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