The previous experimental proofs of Martindale's preference-for-prototypes model (Martindale, 1984, 1988; Martindale, Moore, & West, 1988) did not use artworks as stimuli except the experiment of Hekkert and van Wieringen (1990a, 1990b, 1992) who applied reproductions of cubist paintings. In our experiment, the category of surrealism was taught to naive subjects by repeated presentations of a large assortment of surrealist paintings. In the main experiment, two experimental groups participated. The members of the first group learned the category of surrealism in four series, scaling 30 paintings selected out of 40 so that the 10 most prototypical paintings were left. These 10 paintings were entered in the fifth series, and they were more preferred than the other 30. A similar procedure was followed in the case of the other experimental group, but here the least prototypical elements were left and entered at the end of the experiment. These 10 paintings were less preferred than the other 30 in the first series. This finding proved that the phenomenon we found is a prototypicality-effect and not a novelty-effect.
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