Table Of ContentCOGNITIVE 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,
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ISBN: 0 444 87501 8
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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.
