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Pictures as a Means of Conveying Information Lauren Sue Seifert

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Department of Psychology , The Ohio State University , USA Published online: 06 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Lauren Sue Seifert (1992) Pictures as a Means of Conveying Information, The Journal of General Psychology, 119:3, 279-287, DOI: 10.1080/00221309.1992.9917808 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221309.1992.9917808

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The Journal of Gem& Psychology, 119(3). 279-287

Pictures as a Means of Conveying Information LAUREN SUE SEIFERT Downloaded by [UQ Library] at 05:33 02 February 2015

Department of Psychology The Ohio State University

ABSTRACT. These two experiments, which were conducted at a large midwestern American university, demonstrated that naive art observers can recognize tangible objects that are represented realistically in a picture. However, naive art observes cannot perceive the abstract themes that are portrayed in a picture unless they informed about the relationships between the pictorial symbols and the concepts they represent.

REALISTIC PICTURES ARE PROBABLY a good way to convey information about concrete objects (Kolers & Brison, 1984). If an object itself is not available for observation, a photograph or a sketch of that object can provide detailed information about it. A picture may convey a more accurate idea of what an object looks like than written or spoken language can. However, a picture may convey less abstract information than written or spoken language can. Uninformed observers who do not recognize the pictorial symbols used to convey abstract ideas may be unable to decipher a picture’s themes. These naive observers may fail to recognize the themes of death, love, fear, and despair because they are unaware of the way pictorial symbols represent abstract notions. Object connotation may be culture-bound (Allport & Pettigrew, 1957). Thus, one’s perception of a picture could be strongly influenced by culture as

This article is based on research that was supported by a National Science Foundation graduatefellowship, but the views and conclusions are mine. I would like to thank the editors of this journal for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Address correspondence to Lauren Sue Severt, Cognitive Area, Department of Psychology, Townshend Hall, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210. 279

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well as by life experience. It has been widely reported that the people of a particular culture often interpret their own art quite differently from the way persons from other cultures do (Layton, 1991). An observer may be unable to interpret the abstract information contained in a picture if he or she is unaware of the relationships between the pictorial symbols and the abstract ideas they represent. A person who is unaware of how a symbol corresponds to an idea cannot interpret the symbol, barring overwhelming effects of context. Given artists' use of pictorial symbols to represent abstract ideas, this problem should be easy to remedy. It should be possible to teach naive observers to recognize pictorial symbols for abstract notions and, in so doing, to teach them the language of a particular picture, artist, or style of art. In some cases, the observer might need only a schema, that is, a theme or framework within which to think about the picture (Bartlett, 1932; Bransford & Johnson, 1972; Schank & Abelson, 1977). In other situations the observer might need to be told what individual symbols mean. For example, a naive observer of Jan van Eyck's The ArnolJiniMarriage might have to be told that the woman's blue sleeves and underskirt represent her purity (Vaizey, 1979), whereas a naive observer of The Scream, by Edvard Munch, might need only to be provided with the schema of fear (Fleming, 1980). I am not proposing that pictorial representation in art is the same thing as language. (That would tax the imagination, because there is no evidence of grammar in pictorial representation.) Instead, I am proposing that there are specific relationships between symbols in the visual arts and the objects and ideas they represent. Unfortunately, these relationships are not necessarily consistent from artist to artist or from one work to another. Thus, one of my goals in this study was to uncover what a naive observer must learn to be able to interpret a work of art. The following experiments were designed as an exploration of how abstract ideas are represented in pictures. I planned to demonstrate that naive observers can perceive abstract themes in a picture if they are given some schema for interpreting the picture. Without this information, naive observers will probably only be able to recognize tangible objects that are represented in a realistic manner.

Experiment 1

I planned to demonstrate in Experiment 1 that recognizing realistic representations of tangible objects is relatively easy. I hypothesized that, without some conceptual framework, uninformed observers would not be able to understand the abstract themes in a picture.

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Method Eighteen undergraduate psychology students at The Ohio State University, who participated for course credit, were the subjects in Experiment 1. The 9 men and 9 women were between 18 and 24 years old and reported having 201 20 vision or vision that was corrected to 20/20. I used a portion of the Ishihara test (1977) to make sure that the subjects were not color blind. None of the subjects had taken any art or art history courses at The Ohio State University, and none of the subjects reported having seen the stimulus pictures. The stimuli were seven 3-in. x 4-in. color reproductions of paintings by Arcimboldo (c. 1566-1573), an Italian artist. The paintings were Spring (c. 1573), Water (c. 1566), Autumn (c. 1573), Fire (c. 1566), Winter (c. 1573), Air (undated), and Summer (c. 1573) (Kriegeskorte, 1988). These paintings were chosen because of the realistic manner in which tangibles (e.g., fruits, vegetables, flowers, animals) are represented and because the paintings contain abstract themes (the seasons). A review of six popular art and art history books yielded 100% agreement regardmg the abstract information the artist was attempting to convey (e.g., Kriegeskorte, 1988; Piper, 1984). One abstract theme critical to Arcimboldo’s Spring, Summer, Autumn. and Winter is the seasons, and an abstract theme that is key to his Air, Fire, and Water is the elements (as they were identified in the 16th century). In the first task, subjects were instructed to indicate which, if any, of the pictures they liked and which they disliked. This aestheticjudgment task was used to indicate whether the subjects’ aesthetic preference influenced their judgments about what the pictures represented. Only this very general measure of aesthetic preference (like vs. dislike) was used because the goal of the experiment was not to determine how naive art observers view Arcimboldo’s work. In the second task, the subjects were asked to judge whether any of the pictures were related to each other and, if so, to identify the related pairs and to describe their similarities. This relatedness task was designed to indicate whether the subjects had observed any abstract themes in the pictures. (“Pictures 2 and 6 are gloomy,” or “Pictures 3 and 7 represent seasons.,’) The second task also indicated whether the subjects recognized the tangible objects in the pictures. (“Pictures 3 and 7 both have fruit in them,” or “Pictures 2 and 6 both have animals in them.”) The subjects completed both the aesthetic judgment task and the relatedness task while viewing the stimuli. Thus, neither task contained a memory component. Aesthetic judgments were coded as the number of pictures a subject liked (i.e., 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 , 6, or all 7). The subject’s ability to recognize abstract themes was coded as a function of whether the subject recognized that the seasons were represented in four of the seven pictures (i.e., 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4

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correct). The remaining three pictures were distractors; they were photographs of paintings by Arcimboldo but did not portray the seasons (Kriegeskorte, 1988). Finally, recognition of tangible objects was coded as a binary function, that is, whether the subject named some of the tangibles (1) or whether the subject did not (0).

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Results and Discussion Across subjects, the mean number of pictures judged as aesthetically pleasing was 2.06 (SD = 2.16). The mean number of seasons recognized by 18 naive observers was .17 (SD = .71). Seventeen of the 18 subjects recognized and mentioned at least one of the tangible objects in the pictures. A simple linear regression analysis indicated that aesthetic preference partially predicted ability to recognize the abstract theme, Pearson’s rho = -573. The relationship was significant, t(16) = 2.79, p = .013, but this finding must be interpreted cautiously because only one subject recognized that the seasons were represented in the pictures, and that subject liked all seven of the pictures. The 17 subjects who did not recognize the seasons expressed judgments that ranged from complete dislike of all the pictures to an affinity for all the pictures. The relationship between aesthetic preference and ability to recognize and name tangible objects in the pictures was very weak, Pearson’s rho = .24. This effect was not significant, t( 16) = .98, p = .34. The broad range of aesthetic preferences in this study was an indication that the subjects’ lack of exposure to these particular paintings did not predispose the subjects to like or dislike the pictures. The subjects’ comments indicated that they were receptive to the aesthetic judgment task, despite the novelty of the task and the stimuli. The subjects’ performance on the relatedness task demonstrated that naive observers are generally unable to understand abstract themes in pictures but that they are able to recognize and name tangible objects that are represented in a realistic manner. Work in progress (Seifert) also indicates that this is true, even when the stimuli consist of a broad range of styles and types of pictures, not just pictures of the work of Arcimboldo.

Experiment 2 In Experiment 1, naive observers generally did not recognize abstract themes in the work of Arcimboldo. Moreover, my current research indicates that naive observers generally do not recognize abstract themes in the work of many different artists.

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In Experiment 2, I attempted to demonstrate that naive observers can be taught to understand the abstract information in a picture. I expected that naive observers would be able to discover abstract themes in specific pictures only if the observers were informed of the object connotations in those particular pictures. I wanted to ascertain how much instruction the naive observers would need to interpret the abstract themes in a picture.

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Method Thirty-two subjects between the ages of 18 and 33 participated in Experiment 2. All the participants reported having 20/20 vision or vision that was corrected to 20/20.I used a portion of the Ishihara test (1977) to make sure that all the subjects were able to see a normal range of colors, including red and green. None of the subjects had taken any art or art history courses at The Ohio State University, and none of the subjects reported having seen the stimulus pictures. The stimuli in Experiment 2 were identical to those in Experiment 1. Half the subjects were given a brief explanation of the symbols that were used to convey abstract information in the pictures. Half the subjects performed a forced-selection task in which they named the pictures that represented the seasons. The other subjects were to describe the abstract themes conveyed by the pictures. Because these tasks (forced-selection vs. an openended question) were completed while the subjects viewed the stimulus pictures, there was no memory component involved. The manipulation of instructions and type of test resulted in four different groups of subjects. The first group of subjects (uninformed) completed a forced-selection task, in which they were to choose which pictures might represent the seasons. This task served as a means to apprise the subjects of a possible schema for interpreting the pictures. Thus, even though the subjects were not told what the objects in the pictures represented, the subjects could use the directive of the forced-selection task to discover the abstract themes . in the pictures. The second group of subjects (uninformed) were asked which abstract themes they perceived in the stimulus pictures (an open-ended question). Unlike the uninformedlforced-selection subjects, the second group of subjects were not given any hints about what the pictures portrayed. I expected this group to perform more poorly than any of the other groups because this group had very little information that could be used to interpret the pictures. The third group of subjects (informed) were given a brief, two-paragraph description of the pictures that included a couple of facts about the artist and a description of how the artist portrayed the seasons and the elements. The third group of students then completed the same forced-selection task the first group had.

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The fourth group of subjects (informed) were given the same description of the stimuli that was given to the third group. Like the second group of subjects, they were asked which abstract themes they perceived in the stimulus pictures. All the subjects also completed both the aesthetic judgment task and the relatedness task that were used in Experiment 1. The results of these tasks provided information about the subjects’ aesthetic preferences and about their ability to recognize and name the tangible objects in the stimulus pictures. These variables were coded the same way they were in Experiment 1. A subject’s performance on the test of interpretation of abstract themes was coded the same way for the forced-selection task and for the task that involved the open-ended question; a subject was given a score from 0 to 4, which represented the number of pictures he or she labeled correctly with regard to the season that was represented. Results and Discussion Across subjects, the mean number of pictures the subjects judged as aesthetically pleasing was 1.31 (SD = .86). Twenty-seven of the 32 subjects recognized and mentioned at least one of the tangible objects in the pictures. lbenty-three out of 32 subjects recognized at least two seasons, and the mean of the number of seasons recognized by all 32 subjects was 2.50 (SD = 1.69). I computed the cell means separately for each experimental group with regard to identification of the seasons. The mean number of seasons identified by the uninformed subjects who answered the forced-selection question was 3.38 (SD = .74), and the mean number of seasons identified by the uninformed subjects who answered the open-ended question was 0.00 (SD = 0.00). The mean number of seasons identified by the informed subjects was 3.50 (SD = .76) in the forced-selection condition and 3.13 (SD = 1.36) for the subjects who answered the open-ended question. The results of a 2 x 2 (Type of Instructions: uninformed vs. informed x Type of Task: forced-selection vs. open-ended question) analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated a main effect of instructions, F ( l , 30) = 28.51, p < .01; the subjects who were given a verbal description of the pictures and the symbols that represented abstract themes recognized those abstract themes significantly better than the uninformed subjects did. Type of task also had a main effect, F( 1,30) = 37.95, p < .01, demonstrating that the subjects who received a forced-selection task identified the pictures that represented the seasons significantly better than the subjects who were asked an open-ended question about the abstract themes in the stimulus pictures.

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The interaction between type of instructions and type of task was significant, F( 1 , 30) = 24.29, p < .01. An analysis of planned comparisons indicated that the performance of the uninformedlopen-ended-questiongroup was significantly poorer than that of any other group F(3, 28) = 30.25, p < .01. Thus, the information provided along with the forced-selection task to the uninformed subjects facilitated their performance. A simple linear regression analysis indicated that aesthetic preference was not an accurate predictor of ability to identify the abstract themes in a picture. Pearson’s rho = -.23. There was no significant effect, t(30) = 1.31, p = .20. Similarly, aesthetic preference was not an accurate predictor of ability to recognize tangible objects in the stimulus pictures, Pearson’s rho = - .13; the effect was not significant, t(30) = .72, p = .48. I could not run these tests on individual cells because of the sparseness of the data (there were only 8 subjects per cell). The aforementioned results indicate that subjects who have not had prior experience with a picture may be able to recognize tangible objects portrayed in it if the objects are represented in a realistic manner. (This probably holds true only for objects a subject is familiar with.) In contrast, naive observers cannot recognize the abstract themes of a picture unless they are instructed about what the symbols in a picture represent. Naive observers who are given information about the abstract themes in a picture and the symbols that are used to portray them demonstrate improved performance when their knowledge of those themes is tested. If provided with a schema, naive observers may even be able to discover the abstract themes of a picture. The uninformed subjects in Experiment 2 who were given a forced-selection task could select various pictures that represented the seasons. Because they were given a schema to help them interpret the stimuli, their performance was much better than that of the uninformed participants who were asked an open-ended question. The uninformed subjects who answered the forced-selection question performed just as well as the informed subjects did. Although the uninformed subjects were not explicitly told how Arcimboldo represented the seasons in his paintings, they were given a hint about what to look for in the stimuli. This hint provided the uninformed subjects with a schema for interpreting the stimuli and enabled them to perform as well as the subjects who were given a complete explanation of how Arcimboldo portrayed the various seasons. Clearly, naive observers must be provided with at least a minimal amount of information for interpreting the abstract themes of these works of art, or else they will perform very poorly. Thus, because they did not possess the minimal amount of information that was necessary for interpreting h i m boldo’s seasons, the uninformed subjects who answered an open-ended question performed significantly more poorly than did the subjects in all the other conditions.

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General Discussion Language consists of arbitrary symbols. A person comes to understand the meaning of the word apple through learned associations between the word and the object it represents. Similarly, one becomes able to understand the meaning of the word justice through learned associations between the word and the concept it represents. Associating pictorial symbols with abstract ideas is more complex. There are no rules that dictate the associations between pictorial symbols and abstract notions; nothing decrees that fear must be portrayed as a man standing in the dark, screaming (e.g., The Scream by Edvard Munch) or that purity must be symbolized by something blue (e.g., The Arnolfini Marriage by van Eyck). On the contrary, artists take great pains to represent both tangible objects and abstract ideas in a unique way. Culture also plays an important role in the way a person interprets pictorial symbols. To understand the artist’s aims we must understand the symbolism utilized. The art object one observes is merely the tangible expression of a cultural, and therefore a mental, construct expressed according to that culture’s conventions of visual representation. (Layton, 1991, p. 27)

The influence of culture on art critique has been demonstrated (e.g., Firth, 1951; Seifert, 1992a, 1992b). Naive American observers view the exaggerated facial features of African sculpture as comical (the same way they would view Western caricature [Seifert, 1992a]), although this is not the intent of the sculptor who creates such African pieces (Willett, 1971); many of the sculptures are supposed to frighten away undesirable spirits. Using the experiments in this study, I have demonstrated that, under certain conditions, naive observers can come to understand the meaning of pictorial symbols that represent ideas. More research is needed to delineate the nature of that type of training. REFERENCES Allport, G . W., & Pettigrew, T. F. (1957). Cultural influence of the perception of movement: The trapezoidal illusion among Zulus. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. 55. 104-1 13. Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering:A study in experimental and social psychology. London: Cambridge University Press. Bransford, J. D., & Johnson, M. K. (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 7 17-726. Firth, R. (1951). The social framework of primitive art. Elements of Social Organization (pp. 155-182). London: Watts.

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Fleming, W. (1980). Arts and ideas (6th ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Ishihara, S . (1977). Tests for colour-blindness (24 plates ed.). Tokyo: Kanehara Shuppan. Kolers, P. A., & Brison, S. J. (1984). Commentary: On pictures, words, and their mental representation. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, 105113. Kriegeskorte, W. (1988). Arcimboldo. Cologne, Germany: Benedikt Taschen Verlag. Layton R . (1991). The anthropology of art (2nd ed.). (p. 27). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Piper, D. (1984). The illustrated dictionary of art and artists. New York Random House. Schank, R. C.. & Abelson, R. P. (1977). Scripts, plans, goah, and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge srrucmres. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Seifert, L. S . (1992a). Experimental aesthetics: Implications for aesthetic education of naive art observers. Journal of Psychology, 126, 73-78. Seifert, L. S. (1992b). Experimental aesthetics: Implicationsfor aesthetic education of non-artists. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 26, 107-1 10. Vaizey, M. (1979). One hundred masterpieces of art. New York: G . P. Pumam's Sons. Willett, F. (1971). African art. (p. 143). London: Thames and Hudson.

Received May 2 7 , I992

Pictures as a means of conveying information.

These two experiments, which were conducted at a large midwestern American university, demonstrated that naive art observers can recognize tangible ob...
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