Abstract
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.
Highlights
Evaluating an object’s beauty is a central property of human behavior with aesthetic preferences developing in early infancy (Krentz and Earl, 2013), and influencing behavior in a wide range of circumstances
Cross-Rater Agreement as a Function of Art Type and Age Group In relation to our first hypothesis, that convergence of ratings across individuals may be greater for representational than abstract art, derived from Vessel and Rubin (2010) and building on Schepman et al (2015b), we report the convergence of ratings as a function of art type and age group first
That emotions could have played a role in our study but children may be less likely to report the role of emotions spontaneously, perhaps because of lower levels of metacognition, difficulties in articulating emotional influences or because other more salient influences, such as subject matter, came to mind first
Summary
Evaluating an object’s beauty is a central property of human behavior with aesthetic preferences developing in early infancy (Krentz and Earl, 2013), and influencing behavior in a wide range of circumstances. A key component of all theories of aesthetics is the idea that greater understanding in the viewer reliably enhances aesthetic appreciation (Martindale, 1984; Parsons, 1987; Winston and Cupchik, 1992; Zeki, 1999; Leder et al, 2004; Reber et al, 2004; but see Belke et al, 2015) This is supported by the finding that increased understanding provided by titles reliably enhances the appreciation of photographs (Millis, 2001) and artworks (Russell, 2003; Leder et al, 2006). As Landau et al (2006) suggest, a lack of understanding in response to abstract art may be the primary reason why naïve adult viewers consistently prefer representational to abstract art (Gordon, 1952; Heinrichs and Cupchik, 1985; Winston and Cupchik, 1992; Mastandrea et al, 2011; see Leder et al, 2006, 2012)
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