Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study investigates how external semantic cues and the internal narrative structure of artworks jointly influence the aesthetic experience of non-expert viewers towards complex narrative art. Utilizing Chinese Dunhuang murals as unique cross-cultural visual materials, the inquiry was conducted through two experiments. Experiment 1 employed a behavioral method to collect participants’ subjective ratings of aesthetic comprehension, interest, and liking. Experiment 2 used eye-tracking technology to objectively record metrics such as fixation patterns and gaze entropy during viewing to measure attentional processing and cognitive load. The results indicated that providing semantic cues significantly enhanced viewers’ aesthetic comprehension and interest and guided more efficient, goal-directed visual search patterns (indicated by lower gaze entropy). However, the effect of semantic cues on average fixation durations did not reach statistical significance after correction. A main effect of narrative structure was also found, with continuous narrative murals receiving the highest comprehension ratings. Crucially, a significant interaction was revealed: semantic cues primarily facilitated meaning construction for segmented murals and visual navigation strategy for continuous murals, whereas their impact was negligible for the structurally clear central-subject murals. This study supports that art appreciation is a constructive process driven by schema theory, involving an interplay between top-down cognitive guidance and bottom-up visual information. The findings may offer insights for museum exhibition design and art education practices.

Keywords

aesthetic experience semantic cue narrative structure Dunhuang mural eye-tracking

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ayres

Paas

(2012). Cognitive load theory: New directions and challenges. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26(6), 827–832. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.2882

Bornholt

L. J.

Ajersch

Fisher

I. H.

Markham

R. H.

Ouvrier

R. A.

(2010). Cognitive screening for children and adolescents: General limits or ceiling effects? Journal of Child Neurology, 25(5), 567–571. https://doi.org/10.1177/0883073809352686

Busselle

Bilandzic

(2009). Measuring narrative engagement. Media Psychology, 12(4), 321–347. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213260903287259

Castellotti

D’Agostino

Mencarini

Fabozzi

Varano

Mastandrea

Baldriga

& ... (2023). Psychophysiological and behavioral responses to descriptive labels in modern art museums. PLOS ONE, 18(5), e0284149. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284149

Chatterjee

Vartanian

(2016). Neuroscience of aesthetics. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1369(1), 172–194. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13035

Cohn

Bender

(2017). Drawing the line between constituent structure and coherence relations in visual narratives. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(2), 289–301. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000290

Cohn

Paczynski

Jackendoff

Holcomb

P. J.

Kuperberg

G. R.

(2012). (Pea)nuts and bolts of visual narrative: Structure and meaning in sequential image comprehension. Cognitive Psychology, 65(1), 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2012.01.003

Coplan

(2004). Empathic engagement with narrative fictions. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 62(2), 141–152. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-594X.2004.00147.x

Darda

K. M.

Chatterjee

(2023). The impact of contextual information on aesthetic engagement of artworks. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 4273. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30768-9

10.

Dehejia

(1990). On modes of visual narration in early Buddhist art. The Art Bulletin, 72(3), 374–392. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.1990.10786446

11.

Duan

Fan

(2006a). Complete collection of Dunhuang murals in China: Beiliang and Northern Wei. Tianjin People's Fine Arts Publishing House.

12.

Duan

Fan

(2006b). Complete collection of Dunhuang murals in China: Dunhuang and the Middle Tang. Tianjin People's Fine Arts Publishing House.

13.

Fan

(2019). Dunhuang art encyclopedia. Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House.

14.

Foulsham

Cohn

(2021). Zooming in on visual narrative comprehension. Memory & Cognition, 49(3), 451–466. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-020-01101-w

15.

Ganczarek

Pietras

Stolińska

Szubielska

(2022). Titles and semantic violations affect eye movements when viewing contemporary paintings. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 16, 808330. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2022.808330

16.

Glaser

Schwan

(2020). Combining verbal and visual cueing: Fostering learning pictorial content by coordinating verbal explanations with different types of visual cueing. Instructional Science, 48(2), 159–182. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-020-09506-5

17.

Griffin

J. W.

Geier

C. F.

Smyth

J. M.

Scherf

K. S.

(2021). Improving sensitivity to eye gaze cues in adolescents on the autism spectrum using serious game technology: A randomized controlled trial. JCPP advances, 1(3), e12041. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcv2.12041

18.

Hilbig

B. E.

Michalkiewicz

Castela

Pohl

R. F.

Erdfelder

(2015). Whatever the cost? Information integration in memory-based inferences depends on cognitive effort. Memory & Cognition, 43(4), 659–671. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0493-z

19.

Jankowski

Francuz

Oleś

Chmielnicka-Kuter

Augustynowicz

(2020). The effect of painting beauty on eye movements. Advances In Cognitive Psychology, 16, 213–227. https://doi.org/10.5709/acp-0298-4

20.

Jin

W.-N.

(1957). The content and form of the Dunhuang Jataka paintings. Art Research, (3), 74–80. In Chinese. https://doi.org/10.13318/j.cnki.msyj.1957.03.006

21.

Leder

Belke

Oeberst

Augustin

(2004). A model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments. British Journal of Psychology, 95(4), 489–508. https://doi.org/10.1348/0007126042369811

22.

Lenhard

(2011). Berechnung des Lesbarkeitsindex LIX nach Björnson [Computer software]. Psychometrica. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.1512.3447

23.

(2003). Three books on aesthetics: The course of beauty, Chinese aesthetics, and four lectures on aesthetics. Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences Press.

24.

Lin

Yao

(2018). The impact of accompanying text on visual processing and hedonic evaluation of art. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 36(2), 180–198. https://doi.org/10.1177/0276237417719637

25.

Locher

P. J.

(2015). The aesthetic experience with visual art “at first glance”. In Investigations into the phenomenology and the ontology of the work of art (pp. 75–88). Springer Science + Business Media.

26.

Long

D.-Y.

(2007). Image narration: The temporalization of space. Jiangxi Social Sciences, (9), 1004–518X. (In Chinese). https://doi.org/10.3969/j.issn.1004-518X.2007.09.007

27.

Long

D.-Y.

(2015). Spatial narratology. SDX Joint Publishing Company. (In Chinese).

28.

Long

D.-Y.

(2022). Image narration: The temporalization of space. China Social Sciences Press. (In Chinese).

29.

Maglione

A. G.

Brizi

Vecchiato

Rossi

Trettel

Modica

Babiloni

(2017). A neuroelectrical brain imaging study on the perception of figurative paintings against only their color or shape contents. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 11, 378. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00378

30.

Millis

(2001). Making meaning brings pleasure: The influence of titles on aesthetic experiences. Emotion, 1(3), 320–329. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.1.3.320

31.

Mullennix

J. W.

Pilot

K. M.

Steeves

T. A.

Burns

J. C.

(2018). The effects of cognitive load on judgments of titled visual art. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 12(2), 166–176. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000128

32.

Muth

Carbon

C.-C.

(2013). The aesthetic aha: On the pleasure of having insights into |Gestalt. Acta Psychologica, 144(1), 25–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.05.001

33.

Nisbett

R. E.

Wilson

T. D.

(1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84(3), 231–259. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.3.231

34.

Pelowski

Forster

Tinio

P. P.

Scholl

Leder

(2017). Beyond the lab: An examination of key factors influencing interaction with ‘real’ and museum-based art. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 11(3), 245–264. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000141

35.

Pelowski

Leder

Mitschke

Specker

Gerger

Tinio

P. P. L.

Vaporova

Bieg

Husslein-Arco

(2018). Capturing aesthetic experiences with installation art: An empirical assessment of emotion, evaluations, and mobile eye tracking in Olafur Eliasson’s “Baroque, Baroque!”. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1255. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01255

36.

Rayner

(1998). Eye movements in Reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 372–422. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.372

37.

Redies

Amirshahi

S. A.

Koch

Denzler

(2012). PHOG-derived aesthetic measures applied to color photographs of artworks, natural scenes and objects. In Fusiello

Murino

Cucchiara

(Eds.), Computer Vision – ECCV 2012: Workshops and demonstrations. Computer Vision – ECCV 2012: Workshops and demonstrations (pp. 522–531). Springer.

38.

Ryan

M. L.

(2004). Narrative across media: The languages of storytelling. University of Nebraska Press.

39.

Shiferaw

Downey

Crewther

(2019). A review of gaze entropy as a measure of visualscanning efficiency. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 96, 353–366. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2018.12.007

40.

Silvia

P. J.

(2005). What is interesting? Exploring the appraisal structure of interest. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 5(1), 89–102. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.5.1.89

41.

Tang

X.-C.

(2022). A study on the image narrative of Dunhuang narrative paintings in the Northern Dynasties [Master’s thesis]. China Academy of Art. (In Chinese)

42.

Xie

(2019a). Dunhuang murals: Stories of fate. Gansu People's Publishing House. (In Chinese).

43.

Xie

(2019b). Dunhuang murals: The story of Buddha's life. Gansu People's Publishing House. (In Chinese).

44.

Xie

(2019c). Dunhuang murals: Jataka tales. Gansu People's Publishing House. (In Chinese).

45.

Yang

Tang

Yang

Zhao

(2014). Aesthetic visual style assessment on Dunhuang murals. Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University (Science), 19(1), 28–34. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12204-014-1473-y

46.

Yarbus

A. L.

(1967). Eye movements and vision.. Plenum Press.

47.

Zhao

S.-L.

(1989). The representational forms of early Dunhuang narrative paintings. Dunhuang Research, (4), 34–41. (In Chinese). https://doi.org/10.13584/j.cnki.issn1000-4106.1989.04.004

Guiding the Eye and Mind: The Interaction of Semantic Cues and Narrative Structure in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Dunhuang Murals

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References