Cognitive Procs. in the Perception of Art [psych.] PDF
Preview Cognitive Procs. in the Perception of Art [psych.]
COGNITIVE PROCESSES IN THE PERCEPTION OF ART ADVANCES IN PSYCHOLOGY 19 Editors G.E . STELMACH P. A. VROON NORTH-HOLLAND AMSTERDAM .NEW YORK 'OXFORD COGNITIVE PROCESSES INTHE PERCEPTION OF ART Edited by W. Ray CROZIER School of Psychology Preston Polytechnic and AntlonyJ . CHAPMAN Department of Psychology University of Leeds 1684 NORTH-HOLLAND AMSTERDAM. NEW YORK . OXFORD "Elsevier Science Pub1ishersB.V.. 1984 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN: 0 444 87501 8 Publishers: ELSEVIER SCIENCE PUBLISHERS B.V. P.O. Box 1991 1000 BZ Amsterdam The Netherlands Sole distributors for the U.S.A . and Canada: ELSEVIER SCIENCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. 52 Vanderbilt Avenue New York, N.Y. 10017 U.S.A. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS V PREFACE This book is based on a snall group of the 150 or so papers presented at the International Conference on Psychology and the Arts -- a 5-day conference held in September 1983 under the auspices of The British Psychological Society. Symposia and individual papers were designed to advance psychological approaches to the creation, performance, consumption, and appreciation of works of art. A range of art-forms was in evidence, including architecture, dance, literature, music, painting and drawing, photography, and sculpture; and continuing debates within experimental aesthetics were pursued -- the effects of familiarity upon liking, the determinants of preference for simple forms, and relationships between levels of arousal and judgments of pleasingness. The full assembly of papers can be seen in abstract form in the Bulletin of The British Psychological Society (1983, Volume 36, pp. A113- A140), and some of the papers are available in full in special issues of Leonard0 (1983, Volume 16, pp. 161-256), Visual Arts Research (1984, in press), and Music Perception (in preparation). The clear message from the Conference was that, while the vitality of established approaches (such as psychoanalysis and experimental aesthetics) is still maintained by the advocates of those approaches, there has in recent years been a marked shift in emphasis towards the investigation of cognitive processes. Just as cognitive psychology has achieved some dominance within experimental psychology, so its concepts and methods are now being applied with growing success to the study of the arts. And just as every shift in emphasis within a scientific discipline brings fresh problems to the fore and allows one to regard old problems in new ways, so too this approach has focused psychologists' attention in new ways: for example, attention is now focused upon developmental aspects of the production of and sensitivity to the arts, upon the perception of representational pictures, and upon music perception and memory. This volume is intended to reflect and advance these trends within the psychology of art. Selected conference speakers were asked to rewrite their contributions. In particular they were invited to explore the theoretical rationale for their cognitive approach and to relate their own research to its context. Taken together, the chapters circumscribe an important new area of application of cognitive psychology, and they make a significant advance in our understanding of the processes underlying the perception of works of art. They have been grouped in six sections for ease of reference, but not too much should be made of these divisions: one of the characteristics of the cognitive approach has been a move away from sharp distinctions between theoretical and empirical advances and between different art forms or media. Hence, for example, Kose draws upon empirical studies of the development of children's symbol use to illuminate his analysis of Cassirer's and Goodman's vi Preface philosophical approaches, while Bartlett applies the 'event perception' hypothesis to the study of photographical material and melodies. At the start of Section I, our introduction argues that twentieth-century trends within the arts strongly suggest that the simplification strategy adopted generally by psychologists has failed to do justice to the complexity of artistic phenomena. We propose that cognitive psychology is in a good position to remedy that failure: (1) by reflecting and offering a study of the important part that cognition plays in aesthetic appreciation; and (2) by providing a firm foundation for experimental aesthetics through identifying the processes involved in the perception of works of art. In Section I1 four chapters discuss symbols and meanings in the arts. Traditionally the psychological approach to symbolism and to meaning in the arts has been most clearly identified with psychoanalysis and its emphasis upon unconscious processes and latent meanings. The chapters in this volume take a broader view: Kose and Smythe review a range of philosophical and psychological perspectives on symbols; Hudson is critical of the psychologists' neglect of the meanings of art-works and recommends the adoption of a hermeneutic approach: and Konedni provides an empirical investigation of the 'success' of art-works in communicating their creators' intentions. In Section I11 four chapters take a developmental perspective on the arts. Both Pratt and Willats examine children's drawing abilities and they consider relationships between looking and drawing: the differences in their models of the drawing process demonstrate the complexity of this much studied yet still mysterious set of skills. The chapter by Blank, Massey, Gardner, and Winner provides an empirical study of children's sensitivity to expression in paintings. Dowling's longitudinal investigation traces the development of the spontaneous singing of two preschool children, and he reports experiments on the recall and recognition of sorips. Sections IV and V consider the application of models and concepts from cognitive psychology to the study of the perception of visual arts and music respectively. In Section IV Hock investigates the perception of information about relative location in photographs; Purcell examines his aesthetic preference model through an experiment using photographs of houses,and he analyses relationships among judgments of preference, attractiveness, interest, and goodness-of-example; while Walk describes an experimental investigation of dance and the perception of emotion. In Section V, Bartlett outlines an event-perception hypothesis of memory and applies it to the recognition of visual scenes and the recognition of melody. Deutsch takes two approaches to the notion of 'musical space': a review of attempts to arrive at musical analogues of visual perception phenomena,and a discussion of the illusions which occur when several streams of music are organized. McAdams, too, is concerned with musical organization. His chapter introduces the concept of 'auditory image' as a metaphor for research on auditory organization, and a thorough review of such research is provided. The chapters by Vikis-Freibergs and by Pressing offer complementary approaches to an important but neglected phenomenon within the arts, viz improvisation. Vikis-Freibergs draws upon computer technology to give an account of relationships between spontaneity and tradition in Latvian folk-song; while Pressing attempts to isolate common properties of improvisation in different art-forms and, in outline, he presents a psychological model of the cognitive processes underlying them. Preface vii Section VI deals with issues in experimental aesthetics and reflects the growing realization within this field of the importance of cognitive processes. Boselie and Leeuwenberg draw upon the concept of 'cognitive representation' as part of a model designed to improve upon the formulae proposed by Birkhoff and by Eysenck for relationships between beauty and stimulus properties of order and complexity. Temme argues that cognitive set and task expectations play significant roles in mediating the effects of familiarity upon preference. Apter is critical of the notion of 'optimal level of arousal' which is central to contemporary theories in experimental aesthetics. He points to its failure to show why people should seek out arousal-increasing experiences and proposes an alternative account in terms of pairs of meta-motivational modes rather than one underlying motivational dimension. He uses these to relate a variety of artistic phenomena to theoretical concepts of cognitive synergy and paratelic and negativistic modes. Finally, Marks provides a review of synesthesia in the arts and discusses relevant aspects of his extensive research into cross-modal associations in children. The chapters in this volume indicate the variety of topics in the arts which can be illuminated by the systematic examination of cognitive processes. The perception of musical and pictorial material can be investigated in depth without the problem of making assumptions about artistic value which have dogged past research in the arts. In these pages there are studies focusing on children's singing, copying, looking at photographs and abstract paintings; the appreciation of music (including jazz and rock music as well as classical); folk-song and dance; poems and literary passages; houses; and photographs. The range of methods adopted is also broad: there are intensive studies of individuals, experimental manipulations of variables, multivariate analyses of large sets of judgments, analyses of the writings of artists, composers, performers, and critics, and the recording of a culture's traditions. These chapters suggest something of the renewed vigour which has recently characterized the psychology of art, and they should stimulate further advances in the understanding of underlying cognitive processes. In organizing the Conference Programme we were assisted by an Advisory Group: B(( U.NBSoeAri)wt ,a- yHL)a ,. lH laHal .hJa m s.iEz y s(( HeIunscnrkga ealr()yU,)K , )D , .L DR ..eH Fuutrdsascnohcn e s(( UU KS()AF ,r), a JnW .c.M eJ.) . K, e HDn on.Gew adlryid nng( Ce ar(Un Sa( UdAaS), A) ,) G ,.V .EM .cK koAbn,le aHEdan gi e( nU SA), M.S.Lindauer (USA), P.Machotka (USA), R.Nicki (Canada), D.O'Hare (New Zealand), W. Sluckin (UK) and J.F.Uohlwil1 (USA). As well as gratefully acknowledging the assistance of members of that Group, we thank friends and colleagues who helped in diverse ways. In particular, we should like to identify Sandra Crozier, Paul Greenhalgh, Hugh Harrison, Julia Hawkins, H. Gwynne Jones, Dave Miiller, and Dave Oborne; and our Conference Stewards Dave Morrison, Julia Hawkins, Greg Bolton, Jim Brooks, Richard Dzadiek, Jacqui Eastlake, Nina Edge, Lincoln Grove, Luke Shepherd, and Wendy Sherrat. The major contribution made by Wendy Sheehy is available for all to see: she typed the camera- ready copy for this book; and Siriol David, Bill Sollitt and Mavis Walton were also invaluable at various stages in the production of the book. We offer our thanks to all these people. W. Ray Crozier January 1984 Preston Polytechnic Antony J. Chapman University of Leeds This Page Intentionally Left Blank CONTRIBUTORS APTER, M.J., Department of Psychology, University College Cardiff, Wales, UK. BARTLETT, J.C., Program in Psychology and Human Development, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas, USA. BLANK, P., Boston College, and Harvard Project Zero, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. BOSELIE, F., Psychological Laboratory, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, CHAPMAN, A.J., Department of Psychology, University of Leeds, England, UK. CROZIER, W.R., School of Psychology, Preston Polytechnic, England, UK. DEUTSCH, D., Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA. DOWLING, W.J., Program in Human Development and Communication Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas, USA. GARDNER, H., Harvard Project Zero, and Boston Veterans Administration Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. HOCK, H.S., Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, USA. HUDSON. , L., Department of Psychology, Brunel University, Uxbridge, England, UK KONECNI, V.J., Department of Psychology, University of Cal.ifornia, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA. KOSE, G., Institute for Cognitive Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, USA. LEEUWENBERG, E., Psychological Laboratory, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. MARKS, L.E., John B. Pierce Laboratory, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. MASSEY, C., Boston College and Harvard Project Zero, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
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