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Semantic Stability is More Pleasurable in Unstable Episodic Contexts. On the Relevance of Perceptual Challenge in Art Appreciation

Research in the field of psychological aesthetics points to the appeal of stimuli which defy easy recognition by being “semantically unstable” but which still allow for creating meaning—in the ongoing process of elaborative perception or as an end product of the entire process. Such effects were rep...

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Autores principales: Muth, Claudia, Raab, Marius H., Carbon, Claus-Christian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4749843/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26903847
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00043
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author Muth, Claudia
Raab, Marius H.
Carbon, Claus-Christian
author_facet Muth, Claudia
Raab, Marius H.
Carbon, Claus-Christian
author_sort Muth, Claudia
collection PubMed
description Research in the field of psychological aesthetics points to the appeal of stimuli which defy easy recognition by being “semantically unstable” but which still allow for creating meaning—in the ongoing process of elaborative perception or as an end product of the entire process. Such effects were reported for hidden images (Muth and Carbon, 2013) as well as Cubist artworks concealing detectable—although fragmented—objects (Muth et al., 2013). To test the stability of the relationship between semantic determinacy and appreciation across different episodic contexts, 30 volunteers evaluated an artistic movie continuously on visual determinacy or liking via the Continuous Evaluation Procedure (CEP, Muth et al., 2015b). The movie consisted of five episodes with emerging Gestalts. In the first between-participants condition, the hidden Gestalts in the movie episodes were of increasing determinacy, in the second condition, the episodes showed decreasing determinacies of hidden Gestalts. In the increasing-determinacy group, visual determinacy was rated higher and showed better predictive quality for liking than in the decreasing-determinacy group. Furthermore, when the movie started with low visual determinacy of hidden Gestalts, unexpectedly strong increases in visual determinacy had a bigger effect on liking than in the condition which allowed for weaker Gestalt recognition after having started with highly determinate Gestalts. The resulting pattern calls for consideration of the episodic context when examining art appreciation.
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spelling pubmed-47498432016-02-22 Semantic Stability is More Pleasurable in Unstable Episodic Contexts. On the Relevance of Perceptual Challenge in Art Appreciation Muth, Claudia Raab, Marius H. Carbon, Claus-Christian Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience Research in the field of psychological aesthetics points to the appeal of stimuli which defy easy recognition by being “semantically unstable” but which still allow for creating meaning—in the ongoing process of elaborative perception or as an end product of the entire process. Such effects were reported for hidden images (Muth and Carbon, 2013) as well as Cubist artworks concealing detectable—although fragmented—objects (Muth et al., 2013). To test the stability of the relationship between semantic determinacy and appreciation across different episodic contexts, 30 volunteers evaluated an artistic movie continuously on visual determinacy or liking via the Continuous Evaluation Procedure (CEP, Muth et al., 2015b). The movie consisted of five episodes with emerging Gestalts. In the first between-participants condition, the hidden Gestalts in the movie episodes were of increasing determinacy, in the second condition, the episodes showed decreasing determinacies of hidden Gestalts. In the increasing-determinacy group, visual determinacy was rated higher and showed better predictive quality for liking than in the decreasing-determinacy group. Furthermore, when the movie started with low visual determinacy of hidden Gestalts, unexpectedly strong increases in visual determinacy had a bigger effect on liking than in the condition which allowed for weaker Gestalt recognition after having started with highly determinate Gestalts. The resulting pattern calls for consideration of the episodic context when examining art appreciation. Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-02-11 /pmc/articles/PMC4749843/ /pubmed/26903847 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00043 Text en Copyright © 2016 Muth, Raab and Carbon. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Muth, Claudia
Raab, Marius H.
Carbon, Claus-Christian
Semantic Stability is More Pleasurable in Unstable Episodic Contexts. On the Relevance of Perceptual Challenge in Art Appreciation
title Semantic Stability is More Pleasurable in Unstable Episodic Contexts. On the Relevance of Perceptual Challenge in Art Appreciation
title_full Semantic Stability is More Pleasurable in Unstable Episodic Contexts. On the Relevance of Perceptual Challenge in Art Appreciation
title_fullStr Semantic Stability is More Pleasurable in Unstable Episodic Contexts. On the Relevance of Perceptual Challenge in Art Appreciation
title_full_unstemmed Semantic Stability is More Pleasurable in Unstable Episodic Contexts. On the Relevance of Perceptual Challenge in Art Appreciation
title_short Semantic Stability is More Pleasurable in Unstable Episodic Contexts. On the Relevance of Perceptual Challenge in Art Appreciation
title_sort semantic stability is more pleasurable in unstable episodic contexts. on the relevance of perceptual challenge in art appreciation
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4749843/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26903847
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00043
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