Art expertise modulates the emotional response to modern art, especially abstract: an ERP investigation

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.

Aesthetic evaluations are appraisals that influence choices in important domains of human activity, including mate selection, consumer behavior, art appreciation, and possibly even moral judgment. The nascent field of neuroaesthetics is advancing our understanding of the role of aesthetic evaluations by examining their biological bases. Here, we conduct a selective review of the literature on neuroaesthetics to demonstrate that aesthetic experiences likely emerge from the interaction between emotion-valuation, sensory-motor, and meaning-knowledge neural systems. This tripartite model can in turn be evoked to explain phenomena central to aesthetics, such as context effects on preferences. Indeed, context-dependent appraisals that focus on objects rather than on outcomes could be an important factor distinguishing aesthetic experiences from other kinds of evaluations.

This study aimed to determine the effect of expertise on the eye fixation-related potentials (EFRPs) during the aesthetic evaluation of images, independently in focal and ambient modes of visual processing. Focal and ambient modes were identified by averaging EFRP waveforms about the beginning of long eye fixations followed by short saccades and short fixations followed by long saccades, respectively. Thirty experts with formal training in visual arts and thirty-two non-experts freely viewed 150 figurative paintings presented for 20 s, each. After viewing the painting, the participant answered the question: “Is this painting beautiful?” Differences were found between the group of experts and non-experts due to the amplitude of EFRPs but only in focal mode, which is related to top-down, focused attention on the objects. Long fixations of experts had a higher amplitude of the parietal P2 recorded from right site than non-experts. In the group of experts, the frontal P2 was higher for long fixations on not beautiful paintings in comparison to long fixation on beautiful paintings. Moreover, in focal mode, there were higher occipital lambda response and N1-P2 complex for not beautiful than beautiful paintings. These results are discussed in the light of the results of studies on the effect of visual art expertise on event-related potentials (ERPs), ERP studies during aesthetic judgment task, and the knowledge of different modes of visual processing and EFRPs.