Abstract
Where is the visual aesthetic preference rooted from and what’s its relationship with the perceptual preference that is emerging early? Do young children naturally prefer some visual stimuli or do they learn to appreciate visual stimuli for aesthetic pleasure? Here, for young preschool children who are on the age that the preferences are developing, we provide findings from a study to show that the interplay between early emerging perceptual sensitivity and perceptual exposure promotes the emergence of preschool children’s aesthetic preferences for simple visual patterns. Specifically in the experiments, 4-year-old children were exposed to either symmetric or asymmetric non-figurative forms in a perceptually demanding game; the group of children who received exposure to symmetric patterns showed aesthetic preference to the exposed patterns, while no preference was found in the group that received exposure to asymmetric patterns. The following recognition test then showed that the symmetric objects were differentiated better and remembered more clearly by the children, indicating that the symmetry was perceptually encoded better. These findings suggest that the early emerging perceptual sensitivity to ‘good features’ such as symmetry provides the prior cognitive prerequisites, allowing visual perceptual exposure to nourish the eventual formation of aesthetic preference. Thus, the preferences for aesthetic appreciation are likely the outcome of the interplay between biological and ecological adaptation.
Highlights
Visual aesthetic preference refers to people selectively preferring certain visual stimuli that cause them to feel aesthetic pleasure [1]
After the perceptual exposure introduced by the game, the group exposed to symmetry showed significant preference towards symmetric pictures (M = 76.56%, t (31) = 6.077, p < 0.001, d = 1.074, 95%CI [17.65,35.48]), but the group exposed to asymmetry did not show any preference (M = 47.14%, t (31) = -0.648, p = 0.522, d = 0.115, 95%CI [-11.88,6.15]) (Fig 2), thereby supporting our hypothesis that visual exposure would have differing effects regarding perceptually distinct features in influencing children’s aesthetic preference
The two groups of children, both the one given exposure to symmetry and the one given exposure to asymmetry, significantly recognized the pictures they had played with compared to a 50% probability of chance(symmetry: M = 79.17%, t (31) = 9.251, p < 0.001, d = 1.635, 95%CI [22.74,35.60]; asymmetry: M = 88.02%, t (31) = 12.708, p < 0.001, d = 2.246, 95%CI [31.92,44.12]) (Fig 3), which reflected a successful exposure induced by the game
Summary
Visual aesthetic preference refers to people selectively preferring certain visual stimuli that cause them to feel aesthetic pleasure [1]. The objectivist view from aesthetic theory, dating back at least to Plato, “saw beauty as a property of an object that produces a pleasurable experience in any suitable perceiver” [17], emphasizing the role of graphic structure or of a feature itself in inducing aesthetic experience Empirical studies with this view had found human have aesthetic preferences towards certain visual “good features”, such as symmetry [18,19], curved shapes [7,20], moderate complexity [21] and high figure-ground contrast [22]. Other recent studies even reported that the aesthetic preference to symmetry over asymmetry can be reversed due to long-term art-training expertise [44]; and that compared to explicit pleasure, the symmetry-induced implicit positive affect was found to be inconsistent across different task settings [45] These findings indicated that the formation of an aesthetic preference to symmetry may be associated with perceiver’s interactive experience with the objects, as well as the evaluation contexts. If symmetry has a perceptual advantage, as reported by previous studies [38,39], symmetric pictures should be remembered and recognized better
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