Evaluations of Aesthetics of Faces in Portraits and Photographs

When viewing a painting, a person has an aesthetic experience that consists of visual scrutiny of interesting pictorial features detected initially to satisfy cognitive curiosity and to develop aesthetic appreciation of the display (Locher et. al, 2006). The present study evaluates aesthetic preferences for faces, specifically relating to those influenced by art. Portraits and photographs of faces are matched for variables such as gender, artistic medium, ethnicity, face shape, facial hair, hair color, eye color, and facial position (full or profile) and then shown to participants, individually in separate conditions and then simultaneously in another condition. Data will be collected using self-report ratings and an eye tracker, which is a device that measures eye positions and movements while a participant is viewing the painting and/or photograph. Our hypothesis is that the faces in portraits will be rated higher for pleasingness than faces in the photographs because of the greater aesthetic appreciation and consequent value associated with art (Locher et al., 2006). Further, we expect that data from the eye tracker will be consistent with these ratings and will show that eye scanning movements will focus on features of the portraits that determine the aesthetic value of the paintings and more time will be spent in eye fixations on these features than in similar features of the photographs. This research has implications for marketing and product development, as well as significance for our understanding of what makes art art.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/stander_posters/1088/thumbnail.jp

Rythm of the eyes: enhancing visual communication through eye-tracking technology

Visual is the main form of communication used by designers to convey unique and creative messages to the viewers. Whether the communication processes took place in basic forms such as in 2D sketches, paintings or through rendered 3D animated models, the ultimatum of using visual communication is to enhance the viewers experience with the tangible creative products and subsequently improve the quality of their decision-making. The platforms for visual communication within the creative environment also include advanced visualization technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality, which provide real-time and real-world experience to the viewers. Nevertheless questions were raised whether the designers were fully aware of the viewers perception towards the visual information embedded in their creative products. Without these understanding, the products and their valuable information would be less meaningful to the viewers

A quantitative analysis of the taxonomy of artistic styles

Classifying artists and their work as distinct art styles has been an important task of scholars in the field of art history. Due to its subjectivity, scholars often contradict one another. Our project investigated differences in aesthetic qualities of seven art styles through quantitative means. This was achieved with state-of-the-art deep-learning paradigms to generate new images resembling the style of an artist or entire era. We conducted psychological experiments to measure the behavior of subjects when viewing these new art images. Two different experiments were used: In an eye-tracking study, subjects viewed art-style-specific generated images. Eye movements were recorded and then compared between art styles. In a visual singleton search study, subjects had to locate a style-outlier image among three images of an alternative style. Reaction time and accuracy were measured and analyzed. These experiments show that there are measurable differences in behavior when viewing images of varying art styles. From these differences, we constructed hierarchical clusterings relating art styles based on the different behaviors of subjects viewing the samples. Our study reveals a novel perspective on the classification of artworks into stylistic eras and motivates future research in the domain of empirical aesthetics through quantitative means

Exploring Responses to Art in Adolescence: A Behavioral and Eye-Tracking Study

Adolescence is a peculiar age mainly characterized by physical and psychological changes that may affect the perception of one's own and others' body. This perceptual peculiarity may influence the way in which bottom-up and top-down processes interact and, consequently, the perception and evaluation of art. This study is aimed at investigating, by means of the eye-tracking technique, the visual explorative behavior of adolescents while looking at paintings. Sixteen color paintings, categorized as dynamic and static, were presented to twenty adolescents; half of the images represented natural environments and half human individuals; all stimuli were displayed under aesthetic and movement judgment tasks. Participants' ratings revealed that, generally, nature images are explicitly evaluated as more appealing than human images. Eye movement data, on the other hand, showed that the human body exerts a strong power in orienting and attracting visual attention and that, in adolescence, it plays a fundamental role during aesthetic experience. In particular, adolescents seem to approach human-content images by giving priority to elements calling forth movement and action, supporting the embodiment theory of aesthetic perception

Touchscreen interventions and the wellbeing of people with dementia and caregivers: a systematic review

Background: Dementia can have significant detrimental impacts on the wellbeing of those with the disease and their carers. A range of computer-based interventions, including touchscreen-based interventions have been researched for use with this population in the hope that they might improve psychological wellbeing. This article reviews touchscreen-based interventions designed to be used by people with dementia, with a specific focus in assessing their impact on wellbeing. Method: The data bases, PsycInfo, ASSIA, Medline, CINAHL and Cochrane were searched for touchscreen-based interventions designed to be used by people with dementia with reported psychological wellbeing outcomes. Methodological quality was assessed using Pluye et al.’s (2011) Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) checklist. Results: Sixteen papers were eligible. They covered fourteen methodologically diverse interventions. Interventions were reported to be beneficial in relation to mental health, social interaction and sense of mastery. Touchscreen interventions also reportedly benefit informal carers in relation to their perceived burden and the quality of their relationships with the people they care for. Key aspects included the user interface, provision of support, learning style, tailored content, appropriate challenge, ergonomics and users’ dementia progression. Conclusions: Whilst much of the existing research is relatively small-scale, the findings tentatively suggest that touchscreen based interventions can improve the psychological wellbeing of people with dementia, and possibilities for more rigorous future research are suggested

The Foregrounding Assessment Matrix: An interface for qualitative-quantitative interdisciplinary research

This paper presents the results of a transdisciplinary research conducted by scholars working in the humanities and experimental psychologists in order to find an interface between the needs of a qualitative approach (mainly based on the evaluation of stylistic features) and those of a quantitative analysis, in order to find useful features for testing different reading behaviors and for new hermeneutical enquiries. The results of our research, which was conducted in two Labs (Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion at the FU Berlin and the NewHums – Neurocognitive and Human Studies at the University of Catania), consistently differ from previous ones, as they focus on the whole multi-layered foregrounded texture of a poem and try to evaluate predictable differences in reading, re-reading behaviour and meaning-making processes. We present the FAM, targeting foregrounding elements in three main categories: the phonological, morpho-syntactic, and rhetoric. To identify those elements, four different text levels were taken into account, the sublexical level of phonemes and syllables, the lexical level of single words, the interlexical level of word combinations across longer distance (e.g. two lines), and the supralexical level of whole stanzas or an entire poem. In contrast to previous quantitative analyses on short, isolated sentences and texts, mostly expository in nature (‘textoids’), or on single words or segments, the text is considered as a whole, marked by density fields that work as milestones along a reading route.This paper presents the results of a transdisciplinary research conducted by scholars working in the humanities and experimental psychologists in order to find an interface between the needs of a qualitative approach (mainly based on the evaluation of stylistic features) and those of a quantitative analysis, in order to find useful features for testing different reading behaviors and for new hermeneutical enquiries. The results of our research, which was conducted in two Labs (Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion at the FU Berlin and the NewHums – Neurocognitive and Human Studies at the University of Catania), consistently differ from previous ones, as they focus on the whole multi-layered foregrounded texture of a poem and try to evaluate predictable differences in reading, re-reading behaviour and meaning-making processes. We present the FAM, targeting foregrounding elements in three main categories: the phonological, morpho-syntactic, and rhetoric. To identify those elements, four different text levels were taken into account, the sublexical level of phonemes and syllables, the lexical level of single words, the interlexical level of word combinations across longer distance (e.g. two lines), and the supralexical level of whole stanzas or an entire poem. In contrast to previous quantitative analyses on short, isolated sentences and texts, mostly expository in nature (‘textoids’), or on single words or segments, the text is considered as a whole, marked by density fields that work as milestones along a reading route.This paper presents the results of a transdisciplinary research conducted by scholars working in the humanities and experimental psychologists in order to find an interface between the needs of a qualitative approach (mainly based on the evaluation of stylistic features) and those of a quantitative analysis, in order to find useful features for testing different reading behaviors and for new hermeneutical enquiries. The results of our research, which was conducted in two Labs (Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion at the FU Berlin and the NewHums – Neurocognitive and Human Studies at the University of Catania), consistently differ from previous ones, as they focus on the whole multi-layered foregrounded texture of a poem and try to evaluate predictable differences in reading, re-reading behaviour and meaning-making processes. We present the FAM, targeting foregrounding elements in three main categories: the phonological, morpho-syntactic, and rhetoric. To identify those elements, four different text levels were taken into account, the sublexical level of phonemes and syllables, the lexical level of single words, the interlexical level of word combinations across longer distance (e.g. two lines), and the supralexical level of whole stanzas or an entire poem. In contrast to previous quantitative analyses on short, isolated sentences and texts, mostly expository in nature (‘textoids’), or on single words or segments, the text is considered as a whole, marked by density fields that work as milestones along a reading route.This paper presents the results of a transdisciplinary research conducted by scholars working in the humanities and experimental psychologists in order to find an interface between the needs of a qualitative approach (mainly based on the evaluation of stylistic features) and those of a quantitative analysis, in order to find useful features for testing different reading behaviors and for new hermeneutical enquiries. The results of our research, which was conducted in two Labs (Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion at the FU Berlin and the NewHums – Neurocognitive and Human Studies at the University of Catania), consistently differ from previous ones, as they focus on the whole multi-layered foregrounded texture of a poem and try to evaluate predictable differences in reading, re-reading behaviour and meaning-making processes. We present the FAM, targeting foregrounding elements in three main categories: the phonological, morpho-syntactic, and rhetoric. To identify those elements, four different text levels were taken into account, the sublexical level of phonemes and syllables, the lexical level of single words, the interlexical level of word combinations across longer distance (e.g. two lines), and the supralexical level of whole stanzas or an entire poem. In contrast to previous quantitative analyses on short, isolated sentences and texts, mostly expository in nature (‘textoids’), or on single words or segments, the text is considered as a whole, marked by density fields that work as milestones along a reading route.This paper presents the results of a transdisciplinary research conducted by scholars working in the humanities and experimental psychologists in order to find an interface between the needs of a qualitative approach (mainly based on the evaluation of stylistic features) and those of a quantitative analysis, in order to find useful features for testing different reading behaviors and for new hermeneutical enquiries. The results of our research, which was conducted in two Labs (Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion at the FU Berlin and the NewHums – Neurocognitive and Human Studies at the University of Catania), consistently differ from previous ones, as they focus on the whole multi-layered foregrounded texture of a poem and try to evaluate predictable differences in reading, re-reading behaviour and meaning-making processes. We present the FAM, targeting foregrounding elements in three main categories: the phonological, morpho-syntactic, and rhetoric. To identify those elements, four different text levels were taken into account, the sublexical level of phonemes and syllables, the lexical level of single words, the interlexical level of word combinations across longer distance (e.g. two lines), and the supralexical level of whole stanzas or an entire poem. In contrast to previous quantitative analyses on short, isolated sentences and texts, mostly expository in nature (‘textoids’), or on single words or segments, the text is considered as a whole, marked by density fields that work as milestones along a reading route