Aesthetic Preference in the Transverse Orientation of the Occlusal Plane in Rehabilitation: Perspective of Laypeople and Dentists

The present study had a convenience sample with 236 laypeople and 242 dentists who completed an online questionnaire to choose the most attractive image among six pairs for comparison. Control image: symmetric (parallelism between occlusal plane (OP), commissural line (CL), and interpupillary line (IL)). Change of Control, obtaining three images with a 3-degree inclination of the labial commissures. Image A: OP parallel to IL; Image B: OP parallel to CL; Image C: OP at 1.5 degree mean angulation between IL and CL. Non-parametric comparison (IBM© SPSS Statistics vs. 27.0, p < 0.05). The “Dentists” group’s decreasing order of preference (attractiveness) of the images is: Control > A > C > B (p < 0.05). In the “Lay” group, it is: Control > A > (C not ≠ B). Dentists significantly prefer more the Control and Image A than laypeople (p < 0.001). Sex (single exception in laypeople), age, and dentist’s area of activity did not interfere in the perception of attractiveness. Dentists and laypeople preferred the Control when compared to images with CL canted. In the existence of CL inclination, the preference of the groups was the IL as a reference for OP orientation, with the mean angulation or coincident with the CL being considered less aesthetic.

The Contributions of Emotion and Reward to Aesthetic Judgment of Visual Art

It has long been assumed that emotions play an important role in our interactions with artworks. Similarly, how rewarding we find an artwork could also be an important driver of our aesthetic preference for it. Vartanian and Goel (2004) tested this idea by presenting participants with images of paintings in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, recording brain activation as they viewed and rated them on aesthetic preference. Their results demonstrated that activation in brain regions that encode reward and emotions—including the caudate nucleus, cingulate sulcus, and the visual cortex—covaried with preference ratings assigned to the paintings. This study represented an early example of how brain imaging could be used to test theoretically derived predictions from empirical aesthetics. Indeed, data from that study and several others since have accumulated to demonstrate that emotions and rewards are a cornerstone of our aesthetic experiences in relation to artworks and other classes of stimuli.

Art Is Its Own Reward

The “art infusion effect” suggests that people evaluate products more positively when they are associated with art images than non-art images. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging during viewing of art and non-art images matched for content, the authors investigated whether artistic status alone could activate the reward circuit. Relative to non-art images, art images indeed activated reward-related regions including the ventral striatum. This activity was uncorrelated with response times, ratings of familiarity, or aesthetic preference for art images, suggesting that these variables were unrelated to the art-selective activations. Effective connectivity analyses showed that the ventral striatum was driven by visual cortical regions when viewing art images but not non-art images and was not driven by regions that correlated with aesthetic preference for either art or non-art images. These findings suggest that visual art involves activation of reward circuitry based on artistic status alone and independently of its aesthetic value.

Perceptual Organisation Affects Perception and Appreciation of Abstract Art: A Case Study with Black Square and Red Square by Kazimir Malevich

Perceptual organisation is hypothesised as a key in the perception and appreciation of abstract art. Here, we investigated how relational and compositional features affected the perception and aesthetic appreciation of Black Square and Red Square by Kazimir Malevich (1915). We studied how (i) the presence and obliquity of the red square and (ii) the relative configuration of the black and red square affected the detectability of the obliquity of the black square in this artwork. Results showed that the simultaneous presence and obliquity of the red square masked the obliquity of the original black square. The likelihood of the black square being incorrectly perceived as an exact square was always maximum in the original configuration and even slight alterations in the original configuration of the work resulted in the obliquity of the black square to be noticed. The original artwork was more aesthetically preferred compared to its alternatives. We argue that the artist may have intentionally set the configuration to mask the obliquity of the black square and maximise the aesthetic preference.

The role of population size in folk tune complexity

A positive correlation between population size and cultural complexity is perhaps one of the most consistent findings in the field of cultural evolution. However, previous findings are largely based on studies of technology and are not necessarily generalisable across diverse cultural domains. We investigate the relationship between population size and complexity in music using Irish folk session tunes as a case study. Using analyses of a large online folk tune dataset, we show that tunes played by larger communities of musicians have diversified into a greater number of different versions but are intermediate in melodic complexity. These results suggest that while larger populations create more frequent opportunities for musical innovation, they encourage convergence upon intermediate levels of melodic complexity due to a widespread inverse U-shaped relationship between complexity and aesthetic preference. Our results show that the relationship between population size and cultural complexity is domain-dependent, rather than universal.

The Implicit Aesthetic Preference for Mobile Marketing Interface Layout—An ERP Study

Businesses and scholars have been trying to improve marketing effect by optimizing mobile marketing interfaces aesthetically as users browse freely and aimlessly through mobile marketing interfaces. Although the layout is an important design factor that affects interface aesthetics, whether it can trigger customer's aesthetic preferences in mobile marketing remains unexplored. To address this issue, we employ an empirical methodology of event-related potentials (EPR) in this study from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Subjects are presented with a series of mobile marketing interface images of different layouts with identical marketing content. Their EEG waves were recorded as they were required to distinguish a target stimulus from the others. After the experiment, each of the subjects chose five stimuli interfaces they like and five they dislike. By analyzing the ERP data derived from the EEG data and the behavioral data, we find significant differences between the disliked interfaces and the other interfaces in the ERP component of P2 from the frontal-central area in the 200–400 ms post-stimulus onset time window and LPP from both the frontal-central and parietal-occipital area in the 400–600 ms time window. The results support the hypothesis that humans do make rapid implicit aesthetic preferences for interface layouts and suggest that even under a free browsing context like the mobile marketing context, interface layouts that raise high emotional arousal can still attract more user attention and induce users' implicit aesthetic preference.

Walking Backwards on Uneven Ground

<p>All place has embedded meaning – it is a reflexive method for understanding ourselves through existence in space. We create meaning in place by associating it with (personal and/or collective) memory. As we frame our worlds in context of our places and spaces, architects have an ethical responsibility to their clients, and to the wider society whom they serve. This thesis posits that contemporary architecture in Aotearoa must respond to a need to diversify views on aesthetic preference. This research investigates memory and meaning creation as considered through nostalgia, and subsequently, the cumulative knowledge gained through impressions or experiences. This research utilises an auto-ethnographic methodology to explore personal experience – through memory – as the building blocks of the self. This self-construction is inextricably related to the development of personal aesthetic preferences and is extrapolated out to the collective aesthetic preference or norm. This work reflects on - and moves us towards - a critique of form, function, and meaning-making processes, that claim objectivity; in support of subjectivities.</p>