Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°1, 1378-1385
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.199 1378
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COGNITION OF DECORATIVE FOLK-ART AND
AESTHETIC EVALUATION
Zhuo Bian
Abstract
Taking decorative painting as an example of decorative folk-art, this paper aims to determine the relationship between cognition of aesthetic art and aesthetic evaluation. First, the author summed up the theories on aesthetic psychology, event-related potential (ERP), and neural mechanism. Then, the flowchart of the aesthetic cognition of decorative folk-art was established, and a behavioral experiment and an ERP experiment were designed. Based on the experimental results, the influencing factors of cognition fluency were identified, and the relationship between cognition fluency and aesthetic evaluation was discussed based on the fluency. The results show that aesthetic beautifulness and understandability dominate cognition fluency, which in turn determines aesthetic evaluation; the cognition fluency is positively correlated with aesthetic empathy and degree of recognition. This research promotes the application of cognitive psychology in the appreciation of folk-art works.
Key words: Cognition, Fluency, Aesthetic Evaluation, Behavioral Experiment, Event-Related Potential (ERP).
Received: 11-03-19 | Accepted: 04-08-19
INTRODUCTION
Aesthetics is a high-level display of human consciousness, and the aesthetic process of works of art involves a series of complex cognitive processes such as perception, emotion, memory and evaluation (Altarsha, Monard, & Castro, 2006). Since the birth of aesthetic psychology in the early 20th century, the research on aesthetic cognition and aesthetic evaluation has been carried out. With the development of neuroscience, brain and human neural feedback mechanisms have been introduced into the process of aesthetic
cognitive evaluation (He, 2013). The
interdisciplinary research of aesthetic
psychology and neuroscience makes aesthetic cognition and evaluation have such perceptual factors as aesthetic and art as well as rational
Art Academy of Northeast Agriculture University, Harbin 150001, China
E-Mail: [email protected]
factors such as brain signal and neural feedback, and the research on the relationship between art cognition and aesthetic evaluation has been diversified and from multiple perspectives (Levy, 1976).
Aesthetic psychologists have established physiological psychological aesthetic model, aesthetic prototype theory, aesthetic pleasure fluency model, aesthetic appreciation judgment model and aesthetic psychological cognition model from the angle of aesthetic psychology, to
analyze aesthetic cognition mechanism
respectively from the perspective of psychology, experience, emotion, fluency and others (Mawer, 2012). Through behavior research, some scholars have probed into the influence of non-formal artistic stimulation on aesthetic results. In order to reduce the subjective factors
affecting aesthetic evaluation,
neuroaestheticians used advanced
neurophysiological testing techniques such as FMRI and ERP to study aesthetic neural mechanisms (Nieminen, Istók, Brattico et al.,
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2011). Although the research on the art aesthetic cognition and aesthetic evaluation has been fully developed, the relationship between the art cognition and aesthetic evaluation still lacks a clear answer.
This paper aims at exploring the relationship between the art cognition and aesthetic evaluation, with the decorative paintings of decorative folk-art art of ethnic minorities as the experimental research objects, and adopts the experimental method of combining the aesthetic behavioral experiment with ERP experiment. In the process of the experiment, different contrast schemes and experimental flows are designed, and the influence of the clarity, beautifulness and content understandability of the decorative paintings of decorative folk-art art of ethnic minorities on the fluency of the art cognition is analyzed, and then the influence of the fluency of aesthetic cognition on aesthetic preference is analyzed. Based on the experimental results, the relationship between the art cognition and the aesthetic evaluation is summarized.
AESTHETIC PSYCHOLOGY AND THE
THEORETICAL BASIS OF AESTHETIC NEURAL MECHANISM
Overview of the theories on aesthetic psychology
Aesthetic psychology is a branch of psychology that studies and explains the law of human psychological activities in the aesthetic process. The so-called aesthetic mainly refers to the production and experience of aesthetic feeling, and psychological activities refer to people's knowledge, feelings and meaning. Therefore, aesthetic psychology can also be said to be a discipline that studies and explains the activity process of knowledge, feelings and meaning in the production and experience of people's aesthetic feeling, as well as the law of individual tendency. The main schools of aesthetic psychology, such as the psychoanalysis school, the Gestalt school, the behaviorism school, the information theory school and the humanism school, on the basis of which the physiological psychological aesthetic models, aesthetic prototype theory, aesthetic pleasure fluency model, aesthetic appreciation judgment model, aesthetic psychological cognition and
other aesthetic models are respectively
established from the objective and subjective perspectives..
This paper mainly uses the aesthetic pleasure fluency model, which aims to prove which factors will influence the aesthetic results by influencing the emotion of the aesthetes. The general researchers believe that there is important relationship between the fluency and the positive aesthetic emotion in the process of artistic work and the aesthetic preference. As a kind of feedback motivation in the aesthetic process of art works, positive aesthetic emotion can make aesthetes give positive aesthetic evaluation results. The effects of such factors as content understandability, clarity and lightness on aesthetic fluency in artistic cognition have
also been demonstrated by different
experiments.
Aesthetic neural mechanism and aesthetic flow chart
Overview of aesthetic neuroscience
With the vigorous development of brain science in the 1980s, the subject of aesthetic
neuroscience got the opportunity of
development. Because art aesthetics is the
embodiment of human's high-level
consciousness, the brain plays a decisive role as the most important organ in the process of consciousness, and the aesthetic process must follow the law of brain feedback. In order to acquire the neural mechanism in the aesthetic process, different brain testing techniques are used to test the activities of different brain regions in the aesthetic process to obtain the art aesthetic process, namely, the process of aesthetic neural cognitive mechanism.
Event-Related Potentials
Event-related potentials (ERPs) are potential changes induced by specific stimuli in a certain region of the brain (Carretti, Mercado, Tapia et al., 2001). There are many kinds of ERPs, which are generally divided into two kinds: exogenous and endogenous. Exogenous ERPs mainly include auditory P50, N1, and visual C1 and P1, while endogenous ERPs mainly reflect the brain activities in the process of mental cognition. In general, the average superposition technique is use to extract the event-related potentials, and the signals of ERPs are mainly reflected by
polarity, amplitude, peak latency and
electroencephalogram, that’s, the change of the
potentials in the cortex of the brain are identified by polarity, P represents a positive potential and N represents a negative potential;
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COGNITION OF DECORATIVE FOLK-ART AND AESTHETIC EVALUATION 1380
Figure 1
.
Ethnic watercolor art cognition flow chart
the peak latency represents a temporal
process of mental cognition, and
electroencephalogram is used to locate regions of the brain in response to stimulation (Jung, Makeig, Westerfield et al., 2001).
Because the event-related potentials have a high temporal resolution, it is suitable for analyzing the neural mechanism in the aesthetic process of art.
Cognition flow chart of decorative paintings in decorative folk-art art
With the frequent development of economic exchange, cultural integration, tourism and other social activities, the national integration and coordinated development in China has achieved gratifying results (Banner, 2000). Decorative paintings of folk decoration art of minority nationalities, with figures, landscape and life of minority nationalities as themes, have received extensive attention in domestic art exhibitions. Scholars in the industry have substantially studied decorative paintings of decorative folk-art art of ethnic minorities (Kyberrobison, 1996).
Based on the theories of aesthetic psychology and neuroscience, this paper presents the cognition flow chart of decorative paintings of decorative folk-art art as shown in Figure 1.
EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH ON THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ART COGNITION AND AESTHETIC EVALUATION
Behavioral experimental research
In the behavioral experiment, a picture recognition paradigm is used as an experimental procedure, that’s, displaying works of art with different degree of understandability, clarity and beautifulness and recording the differences between aesthetic recognition responses and aesthetic evaluations produced in the subjects (Carvalho, Sousa, Filho et al., 2014).
Experimental hypothesis
The clearer the work is, the easier it is to get and the more beautiful it is, the more fluency it is processed by the aesthetes, the shorter the reaction time is, the more fluency it is processed and the higher the aesthetic evaluation of the works is (Pelowski, 2012).
P er ce p tu a l s ta g e o f w o rk s C la ss if ic a tio n o f w o rk s W o rt h y o f a es th et ic s N o t w o rt h y o f a es th et ic Aesthetic processing Stop processing E x p lo ri n g t h e si g n if ic a n ce o f w o rk s A es th et ic se n tim en t p ro ce ss in g A es th et ic co g n it iv e p ro ce ss in g T h e m a in id ea o f t h e w o rk A es th et ic j u d g m en t A es th et ic p re fe re n ce ev a lu a tio n
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Table 1.
The average recognition response time for different beautifulness, understandability, and
clarity
Understandability
Different beautifulness
Beautiful General Not Beautiful Clear Not clear Clear Not clear Clear Not clear
High 1400.61ms 3533.12ms 2443.65ms 2344.01ms 2954.70ms 3255.35ms
Medium 3070.96ms 1743.00ms 2458.67ms 3674.16ms 2821.72ms 3221.75ms
Low 2788.41ms 3233.48ms 3054.33ms 2488.31ms 2254.62ms 3485.21ms
Table 2.
The preference average score for different beautifulness, understandability, and clarity
Understandability
Different beautifulness
Beautiful General Not Beautiful Clear Not clear Clear Not clear Clear Not clear
High 3.74 3.40 2.98 2.95 2.90 2.72
Medium 2.90 2.75 2.73 2.67 2.41 2.71
Low 2.995 2.69 2.55 2.94 2.43 2.60
Experimental subjects and experimental materials
30 college students are selected as experimental subjects, all have no art aesthetic trainings, have normal eyesight and volunteer to participate in the test. In terms of experiment materials, 39 works are selected as stimulating materials from the decorative paintings of the decorative folk-art art on the Internet, and the size, pixel and brightness of all experimental materials are uniformly adjusted with photoshop to keep the three dimensions consistent. A feathering process is then performed to obtain 39 blurred pictures (Calvo-merino, Urgesi, Orgs et al., 2010). The subjects are asked to score a total
of 78 works in three aspects: the
understandability is scored in 5 grades, 1 score represents it is easy to understand, and 5 scores represent it is very difficult to understand; the beautifulness degree is scored in 5 grades, 1 score represents it is very ugly, and 5 scores represent it is very beautiful; the clarity is scored in 2 grades, with 1 for clarity and 2 for blurring. The scores of each decorative painting of the decorative folk-art art are averaged to obtain three grades of beautifulness and three grades of understandability (Kirsch, & Cross, 2018).
Experimental procedure
The subjects are guided to a laboratory of a comfortable environment for experiments, and firstly subject to several experimental exercises under the guidance. In the process of the experiment, 300ms "+" is presented on the computer screen, and then decorative paintings of decorative folk-art art are presented. Each
painting presents a maximum of 5,000ms, and finally the subjects evaluate the watercolor paintings (Takahashi, & Oi, 2007).
Experimental results
The average recognition response time for each artwork is shown in Table 1.
It is found from the statistical data that the beautifulness has a significant main effect in the
repeated variance measurement of the
beautifulness, understandability and the clarity, F (2,58) = 8.291, ρ < 0.05, the more beautiful the works are, the shorter the recognition response time is, that’s, 𝑇Beautiful< 𝑇General<
𝑇Not Beautiful ； the response time of picture
recognition is inversely proportional to the clarity under the three degrees of beautifulness. The aesthetic preference scores for each work of art are shown in Table 2.
It can be seen from the table that the higher the beautifulness is, the easier it is to understand and the higher the clarity of the work of art is, the higher the aesthetic score is. Further repeated variance measurements show that the
main effects of beautifulness and
understandability are more significant, while the main effects of clarity on aesthetic scores are not significant. The beautiful works have the better cognition fluency; therefore, they can be
recognized more quickly. The clarity,
beautifulness and understandability of artistic works influence the works’ aesthetic cognition cognition fluency. Through the evaluation of the subjects' aesthetic preference, the positive relationship between the cognition fluency and the aesthetic evaluation can be preliminarily
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COGNITION OF DECORATIVE FOLK-ART AND AESTHETIC EVALUATION 1382
identified (Cardoso, & Cardoso, 2007).
ERP experiments
Experiment 1 demonstrates that the
cognition fluency is the main factor that affects the aesthetic cognition cognition from the viewpoint of behavior. However, because of the lack of quantitative and scientific verification methods in the behavioral experiment, the accuracy of the cognition fluency needs to be further studied. In ERP experiment, the direct relationship between art cognition and aesthetic evaluation preference is explored with cognition fluency as independent variable and based on event-related potentials of brain.
Experimental hypothesis
The ERP experiment hypothesizes that a negative wave appears in the middle part of the forehead of the brain during the aesthetic cognition of the decorative paintings in the decorative folk-art art, and the magnitude of this wave wave is positively correlated to the cognition fluency of the works. There is a direct relationship between P3 and LLP events and aesthetic evaluation, so there is a positive relationship between P3 and LLP and aesthetic preference.
Experimental subjects and experimental materials
13 college students are selected as experimental subjects, with an average age of 22.6. They all have no art aesthetic trainings and physical and mental diseases, have normal vision and volunteer to take part in the test. Because the EPR experiment requires a large number of legends to measure, 150 watercolor paintings are selected as experimental materials, and the size, pixels and brightness of all the experimental materials are adjusted uniformly with photoshop to keep the three dimensions consistent.
Experimental procedure
The experimental subjects are guided to a laboratory of a comfortable environment for experiments, and firstly subject to several experimental exercises under the guidance. In the process of the experiment, 300ms "+" is presented on the computer screen, and then the decorative paintings of decorative folk-art art
are presented. Each picture is presented at most 5,000ms, and finally the experimental subjects evaluate the watercolor paintings. According to the cognition fluency of the works, the first 75 of the 150 watercolor paintings are divided into the high cognition fluency group and the last 75 as the low cognition fluency group. In the process of experiment, the subjects should complete two tasks: picture recognition and picture aesthetic evaluation. In the EPR experiment, the Neurocan Synamps2 system is used to collect EPR data with the sampling frequency of 1000Hz, and the electrode position of the electrode cap worn by
the experimental subjects follows the
international standard 10-20 potential standard.
Experimental result
Taking 1000 ms as the analysis time course and the first 200 ms of the stimulus presentation as the baseline, the ERP signals induced by the recognized and unrecognized patterns are superimposed and averaged to obtain an
amplitude difference graph of different
electrode positions at different fluency degrees as shown in Figure 2.
In addition, through the ERPs, it can be seen that the aesthetic cognitive activity with more fluent cognition is mainly in the central region of the brain, while the aesthetic cognitive activity with less fluent cognition exists in the back top of the brain.
In cognition the EEG data of the picture perception task, the analysis time course is 1600 ms, that’s, from the first 300 ms of the stimulus presentation to last 1300 ms after the stimulus presentation. The subjects' preference to pictures is divided into high and low classes according to the size of the evaluation scores, and EEG is superimposed according to these classes, and then the total ERP average value of the response tasks is obtained according to the experiment, as shown in Figure 3.
In Figure 3, the artistic stimulation of two cognition fluency can induce N1, P1, P2, N2 and other early ERP components in amplitude and latency. Identification type effect verification: No matter in which electrode the region is recorded, art works of unidentifiable type can induce a more significant negative bias signal manifestation, i.e., N2 activity, which is recorded in the middle front than in the back of brain.
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Figure 2
.
Difference wave of recognition-unrecognized under high and low fluency conditions
(a) Fz (b) Fcz
(c) Cpz (d) Cz
Figure 3
.
Total ERP average value induced by high and low cognition fluency picture in image
aesthetic evaluation task
-100 μV
100 300 500 700
-4
4 N1
P2
-4
4
μV
N2
P3
-100 100 300 500 700
-4
4 μV
-100 100 300 500 700
P3
μV -4
4
-100 100 300 500 700
Low Processing Fluency High Processing Fluency
FCz Fz
Cz
Low Processing Fluency High Processing Fluency 4μV
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COGNITION OF DECORATIVE FOLK-ART AND AESTHETIC EVALUATION 1384
Identify type F (1>12) = 7.03, ρ < 0.05 and electrode point F (12,144) = 3.02, ρ < 0.01 between 350 and 500 ms; the effect of cognition fluency on recognition type: N1 amplitude induced by low cognition fluency pictures is significantly greater than N1 amplitude induced by high cognition fluency works of art. The P2 amplitude is mainly distributed in the central area of the forehead, and the P2 amplitude induced by the same low fluency is significantly higher than that by the high fluency works. The P3 signal is mainly active in the central top region of the brain, and the latency of P3 tends to be higher in high fluency works than in low fluency works. The cognition fluency pictures can induce more LPP and P3 signals.
ERP data analysis
It can be found from ERP signals that there are obvious screening differences in the aesthetic cognition cognition between the two types of works with high and low recognition, and also significant differences in the aesthetic evaluation. The N2 signal in brain area mainly reflects the complexity and novelty of stimulation, and the longer latency of N2 wave amplitude is better for low fluency works in ERP experiment, so it is considered that the works with low fluency is more complicated; P3 signal is the main embodiment of aesthetic emotion, and in the experiment, it is found that the works rated as interesting can induce more P300 signals than boring works, indicating that there is P3 significant effect, and the fluency of aesthetic cognition has a positive correlation with P3.
Discussion on experimental conclusions
Combining the behavioral experiment and the ERP, we can make the following reflections on the process of the art cognition of decorative paintings in the decorative folk-art art and the preference of aesthetic evaluation:
(1) Cognition fluency is the dominant factor in aesthetic cognition and evaluation. Among the factors affecting cognition fluency, such as beautifulness, understandability and clarity, beautifulness and understandability have the main effects, that’s, the more beautiful and easier to understand the works are, the more fluent the cognition of works of art is.
(2) The process of aesthetic cognition can be divided into two processes: aesthetic emotion and aesthetic cognition. The two processes are
out of synchronization in time, aesthetic cognition comes into being before aesthetic emotion, and the two processes play a role in aesthetic evaluation synchronously in the later stage.
(3) ERP data once again demonstrate the main effect of cognition fluency in aesthetic evaluation, in which the higher the cognition fluency is, the more obvious the LPP and P3 signals are and the shorter the latency is; the lower the fluency is, the more obvious the N1 and N2 signals are and the longer the latency is. From the behavioral experiment and ERP experiment, the author thinks that the aesthetic emotion is a psychological process that changes constantly and tends to be stable. The aesthetic process of the works of art is basically consistent with the level of the aesthetic process shown in Figure 1. First, it is the stage of perception and cognition of the works, then it is to make the aesthetic cognition evaluation and give up the works disliked; and finally, the aesthetic value evaluation is completed under the joint action of aesthetic cognition and aesthetic emotion.
CONCLUSIONS
The relationship between the art cognition and the aesthetic evaluation has always been a hot research topic in the field of aesthetic psychology and aesthetic neurology. This paper takes the decorative paintings of decorative folk-art folk-art as the research objects to carry out the behavioral experiment and ERP experiment, in a bid to explore the dominant influencing factors and neural feedback mechanism in aesthetic cognition and evaluation. The research has the following conclusions and significance:
(1) Aesthetic beautifulness and
understandability dominate aesthetic fluency,
which dominates aesthetic evaluation
preference.
(2) The higher the aesthetic fluency is, the easier it is to be recognized, the easier it is to trigger the aesthetic emotion of the aesthetes, and the higher the probability of receiving the aesthetic praise is.
(3) By means of behavioral experiment and ERP experiment, this paper provides double guarantee for the accuracy of experimental results, and clearly obtains the relationship between aesthetic cognition and aesthetic evaluation. The research can provide scientific and meaningful guidance for research in related fields.
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Acknowledgement
This study was supported by Humanities and Social Sciences Research Project of Education Department of Henan Province (2017-ZDJH-061) and 2017 High Level Talent Research Project of Henan Institute of Science and Technology.
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