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THE SEARCH FOR OBJECTIVE MEASURES OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT: THE CASE OF MEMORY TRACES

In bringing together the results of the presentations highlighted in this paper, it becomes clear that aesthetic and artistic activities typically involve a network of brain regions distributed over both hemispheres, rather than a specialized area. Functional analysis of these regions suggests that aesthetic appreciation of painting, music and dance involves at least three different kinds of measur- able brain activity: (i) An enhancement of low-level cortical sen- sory processing; (ii) high-level top-down processing and activation of cortical areas involved in evaluative judgment; (iii) an engagement of the reward circuit, including cortical (anterior cingulate, orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal) and subcorti- cal (caudate nucleus, susbtantia nigra, and nucleus accumbens) re- gions, as well. | EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF THE ARTS Vol. 24 1 95-106 2006 THE SEARCH FOR OBJECTIVE MEASURES OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT THE CASE OF MEMORY TRACES MARCOS NADAL GISÈLE MARTY ENRIC MUNAR University of the Balearic Islands ABSTRACT Verbal responses have frequently been used to measure aesthetic experience. They usually take the form of semantic judgments regarding specific aspects or dimensions of certain stimuli. The use of this kind of technique has produced a great amount of knowledge but its combination with objective procedures can increase the validity and reliability of measurement. In this study we set out to assess whether memory traces can serve as an objective control element for subjective aesthetic judgments. We analyzed the relation between aesthetic judgment and recognition of High Art and Popular Art visual stimuli by participants with and without formal art education. Results show that participants tended to give higher pleasantness and beauty ratings to those stimuli that have left a strong memory trace. Lower scores were awarded to stimuli they did not recognize well. However originality and interest ratings did not follow the same trend. This disparity is discussed in relation to the dimensionality of aesthetic experience and the influence of formal art education on subjective measures of aesthetic experience. Today s empirical study of art and aesthetics owes much to the work of Daniel Berlyne. One of his main goals was to establish psychology of art as a scientific discipline and he concerned himself with the development of solid experimental procedures. He believed that Whether a branch of study can be called scientific 95 2006 Baywood Publishing Co. Inc. 96 NADAL MARTY AND MUNAR does not depend on whether it has yet answered its questions. It depends on what kind of questions it is asking and what methods it adopts in seeking answers to them Berlyne 1971 p. 2 . Among the features that set scientific inquiry apart from other forms of knowledge-seeking such .