Mapping the Perceptual Structure of Rectangles through Goodness-of-Fit Ratings

Palmer, Stephen; Guidi, Stefano

doi:10.1068/p7021

Cited by 27 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…1 Arnheim (1974) speculated that a frame has a "structural skeleton" defined by dynamic forces propagated from its sides. Recent empirical measurements have supported Arnheim's intuitions remarkably well (Palmer 1991, Palmer & Griscom 2012, Palmer & Guidi 2011. When observers rated the "goodness of fit" for the placement of a single probe circle at 35 locations within a rectangular frame, the center of the frame always had the highest average goodness rating, which decreased monotonically with distance from the center.…”

Section: The Structure Of a Rectangular Framementioning

confidence: 69%

Visual Aesthetics and Human Preference

Palmer

Schloss

Sammartino

2013

Annu. Rev. Psychol.

520

441

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Human aesthetic preference in the visual domain is reviewed from definitional, methodological, empirical, and theoretical perspectives. Aesthetic science is distinguished from the perception of art and from philosophical treatments of aesthetics. The strengths and weaknesses of important behavioral techniques are presented and discussed, including two-alternative forced-choice, rank order, subjective rating, production/adjustment, indirect, and other tasks. Major findings are reviewed about preferences for colors (single colors, color combinations, and color harmony), spatial structure (low-level spatial properties, shape properties, and spatial composition within a frame), and individual differences in both color and spatial structure. Major theoretical accounts of aesthetic response are outlined and evaluated, including explanations in terms of mere exposure effects, arousal dynamics, categorical prototypes, ecological factors, perceptual and conceptual fluency, and the interaction of multiple components. The results of the review support the conclusion that aesthetic response can be studied rigorously and meaningfully within the framework of scientific psychology.

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Section: The Structure Of a Rectangular Framementioning

confidence: 69%

Visual Aesthetics and Human Preference

Palmer

Schloss

Sammartino

2013

Annu. Rev. Psychol.

520

441

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…2c-d (Firestone & Scholl, 2014; see also Psotka, 1978). And, beyond documenting their existence, other work has suggested that such skeletal representations might also influence certain types of higher-level subjective judgmentssuch as how aesthetically pleasing a shape (or even a realworld structure such as a rock garden) is (Palmer & Guidi, 2011;van Tonder, Lyons, & Ejima, 2002), or what that shape should be called (Wilder, Feldman, & Singh, 2011).…”

Section: Shape Skeletonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing structure: Shape skeletons modulate perceived similarity

Lowet

Firestone

Scholl

2018

Atten Percept Psychophys

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An intrinsic part of seeing objects is seeing how similar or different they are relative to one another. This experience requires that objects be mentally represented in a common format over which such comparisons can be carried out. What is that representational format? Objects could be compared in terms of their superficial features (e.g., degree of pixel-by-pixel overlap), but a more intriguing possibility is that they are compared on the basis of a deeper structure. One especially promising candidate that has enjoyed success in the computer vision literature is the shape skeleton-a geometric transformation that represents objects according to their inferred underlying organization. Despite several hints that shape skeletons are computed in human vision, it remains unclear how much they actually matter for subsequent performance. Here, we explore the possibility that shape skeletons help mediate the ability to extract visual similarity. Observers completed a same/different task in which two shapes could vary either in their skeletal structure (without changing superficial features such as size, orientation, and internal angular separation) or in large surface-level ways (without changing overall skeletal organization). Discrimination was better for skeletally dissimilar shapes: observers had difficulty appreciating even surprisingly large differences when those differences did not reorganize the underlying skeletons. This pattern also generalized beyond line drawings to 3-D volumes whose skeletons were less readily inferable from the shapes' visible contours. These results show how shape skeletons may influence the perception of similarity-and more generally, how they have important consequences for downstream visual processing.

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“…The dot patterns were chosen to represent each symmetry subgroup for this class of images (Palmer, 1991). The circle-in-a-frame images (Palmer & Guidi, 2011) consisted of 35 images of a single black dot (20-pixel diameter) viewed in a white, horizontal, rectangular frame (200 × 300 pixels) with a 5-pixel black border. In each image, the dot appeared in one of 35 different positions arranged as a 5 × 7 grid, with 50 pixels between each position vertically and horizontally.…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting for taste: Individual differences in preference for harmony

Palmer

Griscom

2012

Psychon Bull Rev

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Although empirical research on aesthetics has had some success in explaining the average preferences of groups of observers, relatively little is known about individual differences in preference, and especially about how such differences might covary across different domains. In this study, we identified a new factor underlying aesthetic response-preference for harmonious stimuli-and examined how it varies over four domains (color, shape, spatial location, and music) across individuals with different levels of training in art and music. We found that individual preferences for harmony are strongly correlated across all four dimensions tested and decrease consistently with training in the relevant aesthetic domains. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that cross-domain preference for harmony is wellrepresented as a single, unified factor, with effects separate from those of training and of common personality measures.Keywords Perceptual organization . Visual perception . Music cognition . Good gestalt . Aesthetic preference Do individuals differ systematically in their aesthetic preferences, and, if so, how? The well-known adage, "There's no accounting for taste," suggests that individual differences (IDs) in aesthetic preference are either completely arbitrary or otherwise inexplicable (e.g., Chandler 1928;Woodworth, 1938). However, modern behavioral research on empirical aesthetics has shown that scientifically meaningful statements can be made about average preferences among colors (see, e.g., Ling & Hurlbert, 2009;Ou, Luo, Woodcock, & Wright, 2004;Palmer & Schloss, 2010), shapes (e.g., Amir, Biederman, & Hayworth, 2011;Bar & Neta, 2006;Silvia & Barona, 2009), spatial compositions (e.g., McManus & Kitson, 1995Palmer, Gardner, & Wickens, 2008), and music (e.g., Smith & Melara, 1990;Trainor & Heinmiller, 1998). It therefore seems reasonable that similar techniques could be used to characterize (and thereby "account for") IDs in aesthetic preference.Some headway has been made in this direction already. For example, Jacobsen (2004) modeled IDs in the preference for simple spatial compositions and isolated specific cues that seemed to drive the preference decisions in different individuals. McManus (1980) showed that preference for the shapes of triangles and rectangles varies widely across individuals and yet is consistent within an individual over a time span of more than 2 years. More recently, McManus, Cook, and Hunt (2010) tried to tie these differences to particular personality scales-including the Big Five personality traits as well as need for cognition, tolerance of ambiguity, schizotypy, vocational types, and aesthetic activities-but found no significant correlations.An older body of research, by Eysenck (1940) on IDs in aesthetic preference, is still more closely related to the present research. Using widely varying domains (e.g., black-and-white photographs, colors, polygons, and odors), Eysenck had participants order stimuli within a given domain from most to least preferred. He then correl...

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Mapping the Perceptual Structure of Rectangles through Goodness-of-Fit Ratings

Cited by 27 publications

References 21 publications

Visual Aesthetics and Human Preference

Visual Aesthetics and Human Preference

Seeing structure: Shape skeletons modulate perceived similarity

Accounting for taste: Individual differences in preference for harmony

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