Memory for Aesthetic Qualities

Abstract

Right-handed subjects preferred paintings containing cues that suggested left-to-right (LTR) motion over their mirror-reversed versions. When members of a pair were presented successively, the effect was larger if the LTR version was seen first, but interpolation of other images reduced aesthetic choices to chance levels, even though subjects remembered the first version. When seen second, LTR versions were preferred even when four other images were interpolated, so normally-preferred versions continued to be favored when other images did not follow them. The information required for aesthetic choice is different from that required for simple recognition and is easily disrupted by other visual-cognitive experience.