Collative Properties Research Articles

Free-Energy Model of Emotion Potential: Modeling Arousal Potential as Information Content Induced by Complexity and Novelty.

Appropriate levels of arousal potential induce hedonic responses (i.e., emotional valence). However, the relationship between arousal potential and its factors (e.g., novelty, complexity, and uncertainty) have not been formalized. This paper proposes a mathematical model that explains emotional arousal using minimized free energy to represent information content processed in the brain after sensory stimuli are perceived and recognized (i.e., sensory surprisal). This work mathematically demonstrates that sensory surprisal represents the summation of information from novelty and uncertainty, and that the uncertainty converges to perceived complexity with sufficient sampling from a stimulus source. Novelty, uncertainty, and complexity all act as collative properties that form arousal potential. Analysis using a Gaussian generative model shows that the free energy is formed as a quadratic function of prediction errors based on the difference between prior expectation and peak of likelihood. The model predicts two interaction effects on free energy: that between prediction error and prior uncertainty (i.e., prior variance) and that between prediction error and sensory variance. A discussion on the potential of free energy as a mathematical principle is presented to explain emotion initiators. The model provides a general mathematical framework for understanding and predicting the emotions caused by novelty, uncertainty, and complexity. The mathematical model of arousal can help predict acceptable novelty and complexity based on a target population under different uncertainty levels mitigated by prior knowledge and experience.

Indonesian millennial consumers’ perception of tempe – And how it is affected by product information and consumer psychographic traits

Nine different tempe (five traditional and four modernised versions of tempe) were tested by 165 millennial consumers (63.6% women) in blind and informed sessions. The effects of information on hedonic response, sensory perception, collative properties and the product-elicited emotions were evaluated. The provided information related to the raw materials (bean type), origin (local or imported) and the production methods (traditional inoculum usar, with starter culture inoculum ragi and use of stainless steel factory processing equipment hygienis). The millennial consumers’ hedonic response and other parts of their perception were highly affected by the product information. The five traditional tempe were more liked when the product information was provided. In addition, significantly differences in collative properties were observed when product information is provided. Particularly the collative properties Authentic and Traditional. The elicited emotion that were most affected were Proudness. Surprisingly, a number of sensory properties were also affected significantly by the provided information. However, the interaction is not systematic neither for bean nor production type. Segmentation of respondents based on their level of Food Neophobia and Attitudes Towards Traditional Foods (ATTF), showed profound differences. ATTF segmentation in particular, as it affected both hedonic response, elicited emotions, as well as sensory and collative properties. Pro-traditional consumers reacted more positively to the information than other segments. The results demonstrated the powerful effect of transparency regarding the products’ provenience and product methods. The results show the importance of the millennial consumers’ education and information to preserve or maintain the diversity of food we eat.

Art expertise in construing meaning of representational and abstract artworks

Aesthetic appraisal of artwork can present the observer with visual problems to solve in the process of grasping its meaning and ‘visual rightness’ (i.e. “good” structure; Locher, 2003), with an elaboration on perceptual, semantic and affective dimensions (e.g. Marković, 2011). Thus observer's expertise is a factor in aesthetic appraisal. To examine the influence of art training on the aesthetic response, and to clarify the nature of the Representational/Abstract distinction, 30 Experts and 33 Non-experts (Art and Psychology students, respectively) were asked to rate 24 paintings on six affective and affective-evaluative semantic differential scales. Stimuli were images of paintings from the period 1900–1935, 12 broadly Representational and 12 broadly Abstract. Relative to Non-experts, Experts rated Abstract artworks as more Interesting, Beautiful, Informative and Sophisticated, distinguishing them less markedly from Representational artworks. Aggregate Expert and Non-expert ratings, processed by factor analysis, resulted in a two-factor solution. The first factor, contrasting Abstract and Representational artworks, appeared more salient for Non-experts. The second factor, Cool–Warm, separating vibrantly-colored paintings from those with a blue-dominated/dull palette, was more salient for Experts. While Non-experts exaggerated differences between Abstract and Representational paintings, Experts appraised these two types of art similarly, attending more to artwork collative properties. We conclude that appreciation of art by Experts involves ‘cognitive mastery’ (Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004), i.e. more complex, cues-based visual schemata which equip them with more sophisticated strategies for analysing collative properties and semantics of an artwork while parsing ‘visual rightness’ to unfold its visual meaning.

The role of aromatic similarity in food and beverage pairing

Aromatic similarity is often mentioned by culinary experts and Sommeliers as a basic principle for matching food and beverages. The aim of this study was to investigate how this pairing principle modulates consumers’ judgment of pairings.Two kinds of beverage-food pairing were considered: syrup based lemon soft drink paired with aromatized dairy product (experiment 1) and beer flavoured with either lemon or smoky aroma paired with savoury verrines (experiment 2). In each experiment the flavoured drinks were associated with food flavoured with either the same aroma or another one, leading to two contrasting levels of aromatic similarity. We hypothesized that aromatic similarity would increase the liking of the pairing by increasing perceived harmony and homogeneity and decreasing complexity. Pairings were assessed by a group of about 50 participants in a within experimental design.Experiment 1 confirmed our hypotheses. The pair that shared an aroma was preferred over the pair with different aromas. Aromatic similarity also increased the pairing’s perceived harmony and homogeneity and decreased the pairing’s complexity. Experiment 2 also supported our hypothesis but to a lesser extent. For lemon beer pairings, aromatic similarity induced an increase in harmony and homogeneity but did not affect complexity. In contrast, for smoky beer pairings, aromatic similarity did not affect harmony or homogeneity but induced a decrease in complexity. Moreover no effect or only a marginal effect was observed on liking. We suggest a model that could account for these results in which aromatic similarity would impact liking of the pair by modulating collative properties, specifically harmony and complexity, of the food-beverage pairing.

Stimulus collative properties and consumers’ flavor preferences

The present work investigated consumers’ hedonic response to flavor stimuli in light of Berlyne's collative-motivational model of aesthetic preferences. According to this paradigm, sensory preferences are a function of a stimulus’ arousal potential, which is determined by its collative properties. The relationship between overall arousal potential and hedonic response takes the shape of an inverted “U”, reaching an optimum at a certain level of arousal potential. In three independent studies, using different sets of novel beers as stimuli, consumers reported their hedonic response and rated three collative properties: novelty, familiarity and complexity. Relationships between these collative properties and hedonic ratings were explored by polynomial regression. The results revealed patterns in line with Berlyne's predictions (curvilinear relationship) with regard to perceived novelty, whereas mixed results were obtained for familiarity and complexity. Additionally, in two of the studies, the moderating role of relevant consumer characteristics – product knowledge, food neophobia and variety seeking tendency – was investigated. A consumer's degree of product knowledge was found to significantly reduce perceived complexity and novelty, ostensibly reflecting the learning that occurs with previous exposures.

Adolescent and adult visual preferences for pictures of fruit and vegetable mixes – Effect of complexity

Complexity is an important parameter for the appreciation of foods as a bell-shaped relationship between hedonic appreciation and complexity has been found by Berlyne (1970). The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between adolescent and adult visual preferences and perceived complexity for vegetable (V), fruit (F), and combined fruit and vegetable (FV) mixes. Two hundred and forty-two adolescents and 119 adults performed three incomplete rankings of visual preference of eight pictures of V mixes, eight pictures of F mixes, and eight pictures of FV mixes, respectively. The three sets of pictures varied in their level of collative properties. They were designed using a 23 design by varying the cut, color, number of products, type of product, and combination of products. The pictures were also evaluated for perceived complexity by a descriptive panel. The results show high correlations between designed collative properties and perceived complexity. Inverted U-shaped relationships between visual preference and perceived complexity were found for both the V mixes and the F mixes but not for the FV mixes. For the V and the F mixes, the subjects’ optimal level of complexity was found dependent on whether they were adolescents or adults, frequency of eating fruits and vegetables, and gender.

Perceived stimulus complexity and food preference development

The importance of perceived complexity, a ‘collative property’ as defined by [Berlyne, D. E. (1967). Arousal and reinforcement. In Nebraska symposium on motivation (pp. 1–110). University of Nebraska Press], to the dynamic development of preference was investigated. Eighty-six female and 82 male subjects rated their liking for and various collative properties of seven very similar orange drinks that differed only in perceived complexity as a result of adding small quantities of other flavours. This was done before and after giving each subject extended experience of one of the drinks, each being used equally often for this purpose. As predicted by the theory of [Dember, W. N., & Earl, R. W. (1957). Analysis of exploratory, manipulatory and curiosity behavior. Psychological Review, 64 (2), 91–96] exposure to a stimulus with a slightly higher complexity than an individual subject’s optimally preferred level of perceived complexity, caused an upwards shift in that level, whereas exposure to a less complex stimulus had no such effect. Changes in the appreciation of the drinks predicted by the theory were also observed.

Emotional Responses to Art: From Collation and Arousal to Cognition and Emotion

The study of emotional responses to art has remained curiously detached from the psychology of emotions. Historically, the leading tradition has been Daniel Berlyne's psychobiological model, embodied by the “new experimental aesthetics” movement of the 1970s. That theory explained hedonic qualities of art by referring to arousal-modifying “collative properties” of art, such as complexity, novelty, uncertainty, and conflict. Berlyne's influence on the experimental study of aesthetics has been enormous, largely for the better but also for the worse. Berlyne's suspicion of cognitive psychology led to an unproductive perseveration on arousal as the mechanism of “aesthetic responses.” This article describes how appraisal theories of emotion inform the study of aesthetics. Appraisal theories make new predictions about emotional responses to art, expand the domain of aesthetic emotions beyond positive emotions such as interest and enjoyment, inform other theories (e.g., prototypicality models), and reinterpret past findings.

273 Objective evaluation of the psychophysiological response induced by preferred or non-preferred foods

The importance of perceived complexity, a ‘collative property’ as defined by [Berlyne, D. E. (1967). Arousal and reinforcement. In Nebraska symposium on motivation (pp. 1–110). University of Nebraska Press], to the dynamic development of preference was investigated. Eighty-six female and 82 male subjects rated their liking for and various collative properties of seven very similar orange drinks that differed only in perceived complexity as a result of adding small quantities of other flavours. This was done before and after giving each subject extended experience of one of the drinks, each being used equally often for this purpose. As predicted by the theory of [Dember, W. N., & Earl, R. W. (1957). Analysis of exploratory, manipulatory and curiosity behavior. Psychological Review, 64 (2), 91–96] exposure to a stimulus with a slightly higher complexity than an individual subject’s optimally preferred level of perceived complexity, caused an upwards shift in that level, whereas exposure to a less complex stimulus had no such effect. Changes in the appreciation of the drinks predicted by the theory were also observed.

The Role of Formal Art Training on Perception and Aesthetic Judgment of Art Compositions

significance of the painting. It is Does formal art training educate the the point at which the scanning eye by enabling the viewer to carry out the pattern settles down on an average type of in-depth analysis of the compositiol path after initially traversing a varielements called for in Berlyne's theory? Do able number of more-or-less ranferences in visual exploration contribute to aesthetic judgment? To answer these ques dom paths largely determined by tions, the present study compares visual pictorial features. According to exploration patterns of art-trained and Molnar, the viewing of good comuntrained viewers who judged composition positions reaches equilibrium after that differed in balance through manipulati( of symmetrical organization. fewer transitions than does the viewing of bad compositions, which he demonstrates by comparing transition-probability matricies from Manet's Olympia with Titian's Sacred Love and Earthly Love. An important implication of this finding is that the aesthetic qualities of a visual composition are more likely to be sought during early scanning, presumably to satisfy diversive exploratory aims; late scanning is more likely to occur to satisfy cognitive curiosity, a specific exploration aim. Molnar's approach has great promise, and the present study uses it as a point of departure. Berlyne's theory of psychoaesthetics has been used by Molnar to provide a theoretical framework for relating perceptual analysis to aesthetic judgment. According to the theory, the viewer's aesthetic response to an artwork is closely tied to perceptual exploration. Berlyne distinguishes between two types of exploratory behavior: diversive and specific. Diversive exploratory behavior occurs in order to seek out stimulation, regardless of the content or source, that has appealing collative properties [8]. Specific exploratory behavior occurs when a state of perceptual or epistemic curiosity is aroused in the viewer by uncertainty about, or incomplete perception of, information content. The two types of exploratory behavior are reflected by the clustering or lack of clustering of eye fixations on pictorial features as a viewer scans it. Widely dispersed, sparsely populated clusters C. F. Nodine (perceptual psychologist), University of Pennsylvania, Department of Radiology, Pendergrass Diagnostic Research Laboratory, 308 Medical Education Building, 36th and Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6086, U.S.A. PJ. Locher (experimental psychologist), Montclair State College, Department of Psychology, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043, U.S.A. E.A. Krupinski (vision researcher), University of Arizona, Department of Radiology, Tucson, AZ 85724, U.S.A. Received 22January 1991. LEONARDO, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 2219-227,1993 n

Intensity, Dissonance, and Preference for Pure Tones

An experiment on preference for pure tone pairs varying in intensity and dissonance was conducted in order to test predictions derived from Berlyne's theory of aesthetic preference. According to the theory, preference is an inverted-U function of arousal potential; the determinants of arousal potential are summed, so that an increase in the amount of one determinant leads to a decrease in the maximally preferred level of other determinants; and collative properties, such as dissonance, are the most important predictors of preference. The experiment supported none of these predictions. Preference was related to intensity and dissonance by monotonic or U-shaped functions. The trade-off between intensity and dissonance was not present. Intensity rather than dissonance was the most important determinant of preference. As compared with intensity, the effect of dissonance on preference was negligible. The results are explained in terms of a connectionist theory of aesthetic preference.

Aesthetic Preference: Anomalous Findings for Berlyne's Psychobiological Theory

Seven experiments were conducted to test predictions derived from Berlyne's theory of aesthetic preference. According to this theory, preference is an inverted-U function of arousal potential; the determinants of arousal potential are summed, with the consequence that an increase in the amount of one determinant leads to a decrease in the maximally preferred level of other determinants; and collative properties, such as complexity, are the most important predictors of preference

Relationship of Musical Preference to Collative, Ecological, and Psychophysical Variables

Two experiments were conducted in order to test predictions derived from Berlyne's theory of aesthetic preference. According to the theory, preference is an inverted-U function of arousal potential; the determinants of arousal potential are summed, with the consequence that an increase in the amount of one determinant leads to a decrease in the maximally preferred level of other determinants; and collative properties, such as dissonance, are the most important predictors of preference. The experiments supported none of these predictions. Preference tended to be related to its determinants by monotonic or U-shaped functions. The predicted trade-off among the determinants of preference was not clearly present. Semantic factors rather than collative properties were the most important determinants of preference. In Experiment 1, uncertainty was related to preference in an inverted-U manner, but it was shown that this may be an artifact of a U-shaped relationship between preference and melodic typicality. In Experiment 2, it was found that subject-rated meaningfulness is highly related to preference for melodies, whereas subjectively perceived complexity is essentially unrelated to preference. The results are explained in terms of a cognitive theory of aesthetic preference.

Dimensions of meaning in the perception of natural settings and their relationship to aesthetic response

This research identified, through the use of pairwise similarity judgements and a repertory grid methodology, the dimensions of meaning individuals use in discriminating among natural settings, and the relationship of these dimensions to aesthetic response. Randomly selected photographic stimuli were presented to 52 subjects in an experimental setting, using a micro-computer to control presentation of stimuli and tasks. Five dimensions of meaning were identified, with subjects differentially weighting these dimensions in terms of their salience to aesthetic response. It is argued that although the collative properties of experimentally derived stimuli are important in modifying arousal levels (Berlyne, 1971), when investigating “environments” and not “stimuli”, the perceived meaning or ecological properties (Berlyne, 1971) are additional and important determinants of aesthetic response.

Verbal responses of male college students to human figure paintings varying in collative properties, perceived sexuality, and perceived aggression.

20 male undergraduates rated 60 human figure paintings on verbal scales to index collative variability (e.g., simple-complex), perceived sexuality, and perceived aggression in the stimuli. Regression equations were used to predict epistemic (interest) and diversive (pleasingness) responses to the paintings. Collative variability predicted diversive but not epistemic appreciation. Perceived aggression was the strongest predictor for both types of aesthetic reaction. Perceived sexuality was most strongly related to diversive appreciation. Both linear and nonlinear functions emerged and these were discussed in terms of consistency with Berlyne's 1971 theory of aesthetics.

Exploratory Behavior in Infants and Animals: A Behavior Analysis

Exploratory behavior in infants and animals generally has been viewed in recent years in terms of Berlyne’s learning theory which postulates collative properties for antecedent stimuli and specific hypothetical drive variables. This formulation presents problems mainly because of term ambiguities. An alternative approach treats exploratory behavior as a class of operant behavior that is strengthened by consequent physical stimuli under specifiable setting conditions. The physical stimuli involved are generated by the interaction of an individual with the physical world.

A Microgenetic Approach to the Integration of Contrasexual Characteristics

Assessed relationships between introversion-extraversion and the integration of contrasexuality. Pictorial stimuli containing contrasexual or congruent sexual content were presented tachistoscopically at increasing durations, with recognition time scores and the rated emotional distance levels of percept descriptions selected as indices of integration. The following hypotheses were advanced: (1) Subjects shown contrasexual pictures would require more presentations to form a stimulus-bound percept than would subjects shown congruent pictures; (2) Extraverts would require more presentations of the contrasexual pictures to form a stimulus-bound percept than would introverts; (3) Extraverts would manifest more emotional distance when describing a stimulus-bound contrasexual percept than would introverts. Hypotheses I and 3 received clear support, while Hypothesis 2 received indirect confirmation at early stages of percept development (prior to correct recognition). Results were discussed in relation to (l) Jung's theory of introversion-extraversion, focusing on content factors of the stimuli, and (2) Berlyne's arousal model, focusing on collative properties of the stimuli. Comparisons were drawn between the present microgenetic approach and a similar perceptual method, and between the present theoretical formulation and the concept of psychological androgyny.

The perception of collative properties in visual stimuli

Two experiments were conducted to determine how quickly subjects respond to collative properties (e. g., Complexity, Uncertainty) of visual stimuli. In Experiment 1 subjects were presented with reproductions of paintings and artificial patterns which varied in collative properties (e. g., Uncertainty, Redundancy). Subjects were able to discriminate these properties on related verbal scales after only a single glance (50 msec) as well as after multiple glances (500 and 5000 msec). In Experiment 2 subjects were presented with pairs of paintings and patterns differing along collative dimensions (e. g., High versus Low Uncertainty) in an exploratory choice paradigm. The results show that for exploratory choice subjects were particularly sensitive to unity or order after only a single glance (50 msec) and to diversity or complexity after multiple glances (500 and 5 000 msec). In general, the data for the single glance condition are consistent with theories which attribute holistic processing to the initial phase of perception.

Grade/Age Levels and The Reinforcement Value of the Collative Properties of Music

The objective of this investigation was to determine whether complex or redundant music conditions as found in form, dynamics, rhythm, and multiple combination of elements have different reinforcement values at developmentally crucial grade and age levels. Sixty-four subjects from second, third, fifth, and sixth grade classrooms participated in the study. Two measurements were obtained for each subject: (1) the number of seconds spent attending to complexity and redundancy as found in each of the four music components; and (2) choice frequencies between complexity and redundancy in each of the music components. Both measurements employed the same music stimuli-appropriately manipulated tone row music. The results indicated that second and third graders listened to more of the complex and redundant music conditions than fifth and sixth graders. No differences were apparent either in complexity and redundancy conditions or between any grades in choice.

Thematic and collative properties of written jokes and their contribution to funniness.

Thematic and collative properties of written jokes and their contribution to funniness.