面孔审美加工的神经机制及个体差异

外显和内隐的面孔审美加工的脑成像研究表明,美的面孔比不美的面孔导致眶额皮层、伏隔核、杏仁核等奖赏脑区更大的激活。脑电研究则发现了与面孔审美加工有关的早期负波和晚期正成分。面孔审美加工有关的脑区活动也受到性别、生理周期等个体因素的调节。未来的研究需要比较美的面孔与其它奖赏刺激加工的神经机制,探讨面孔审美加工的不同阶段及时间进程,在面孔知觉的框架下形成合理的面孔审美加工的神经模型。     

先秦儒家美学之"美"的边界

“Beauty” is a very important concept in Pre-Qin Confucian aesthetics. Pre-Qin Confucian aesthetics generally had two viewpoints when defining beauty: Negatively, by stressing that “beauty” in the aesthetic sense was not “good”; and positively, by stressing two factors: one, that beauty was related to “feeling” which was not an animal instinct, the other was that “beauty” was a special texture with a particular meaning. “Beauty” in Pre-Qin Confucian aesthetics may be defined as “texture (or form)” capable of communicating feeling or triggering a reaction of feeling. __________ Translated from Shanghai shifan daxue xuebao 上海师范大学学报 (Journal of Shanghai Normal University), 2007, (7): 80–85     

On the aesthetic potential of sports and physical education

Even though there is a general presence of aesthetics in school curricula in most of western countries, both at the level of terminology and at the level of choice and definition of contents, objectives and skills to be developed, the approach to sports and physical education potential for the development of aesthetic education of students still does not seem to be a reality in the agenda of this subject. Moreover, it is not transversal in terms of its different didactic contents. In order to explore its relevance, the aim of this work was to deepen how aesthetics is internal and central to sports experience, and which elements of sports and physical education lived experiences can be relevant in the promotion and development of the aesthetic sensibility of students. We propose the deepening of the subject through an hermeneutical qualitative research approach, confronting the content collected in 19 semi-structured interviews that enabled the thematic analysis of its content, and through it, the discussion of viewpoints of representative subjects among those that are the main players in the consideration of an aesthetic education through sport, namely physical education teachers and researchers in the context of aesthetics and sports sciences. With the information gathered and after its processing, we could conclude that there are aesthetic elements of sport's experience that should be taken into account in an aesthetic educational point of view of physical education, namely: complexity, diversity, playability, tension between drama and accuracy, overcoming experience, risk and vulnerability, unpredictable storylines and uncertainty, technique and effectiveness.     

Recommending beauty: semantics and pragmatics of aesthetic predicates

The paper offers a semantic and pragmatic analysis of statements of the form ‘x is beautiful’ as involving a double speech act: first, a report that x is beautiful relative to the speaker’s aesthetic standard, along the lines of naive contextualism; second, the speaker’s recommendation that her audience comes to share her appraisal of x as beautiful. We suggest that attributions of beauty tend to convey such a recommendation due to the role that aesthetic practices play in fostering and enhancing interpersonal coordination. Aesthetic practices are driven by a disposition towards the attunement of attitudes and aesthetic recommendations contribute to forwarding such attunement. Our view is motivated by an attempt to satisfy the following set of desiderata: to account for (i) the experiential nature of aesthetic judgments, (ii) disagreements in aesthetic debates, and (iii) the normative aspirations of aesthetic discourse, as well as to avoid appealing to (iv) error theory and (v) realist ontological commitments.     

Quiet beauty: problems of agency and appearance in evangelical Christianity

How does the cultivation of beauty interact with agency? In this article the author discusses the religious value of beauty for conservative evangelical Christians in the English town of Brighton. Building on the anthropological approach to art and agency developed by Alfred Gell, the author considers the manner in which the everyday of bodies, relationships and personal testimonies become implicated in a deferential semiotics in which meaning resides in the self but is not owned by it. Through this work, women engage with an on-going project of visibility and objectification that is often tenuous and difficult but is nevertheless compelling, as they seek to mediate the agency of God.     

Bion and the sublime: The origins of an aesthetic paradigm

In constructing his theory Bion drew on a number of symbolic matrices: psychoanalysis, philosophy, mathematics, literature, aesthetics. The least investigated of these is the last. True, we know that Bion cites many authors of the Romantic period, such as Coleridge, Keats, Blake and Wordsworth, as well as others who were held in high esteem in the Romantic period, such as Milton. However, less is known about the influence exerted on him by the aesthetics of the sublime, which while chronologically preceding Romanticism is in fact one of its components. My working hypothesis is that tracing a number of Bion's concepts back to this secret model can serve several purposes: firstly, it contributes to the study of the sources, and, secondly, it makes these concepts appear much less occasional and idiosyncratic than we might believe, being as they are mostly those less immediately understandable but not less important (O, negative capability, nameless dread, the infinite, the language of achievement, unison etc.). Finally, connecting these notions to a matrix, that is, disclosing the meaning of elements that are not simply juxtaposed but dynamically interrelated, in my view significantly increases not only their theoretical intelligibility but also their usefulness in clinical practice. In conclusion, one could legitimately argue that Bion gradually subsumed all the other paradigms he drew on within the aesthetic paradigm.     

神经美学视角的审美愉悦加工机制

审美对象特有的刺激属性会唤起观赏者特定的情绪或情感反应。个体在欣赏自然、艺术品和其他人类作品时会产生审美愉悦体验。审美愉悦-兴趣模型(PIA)认为, 审美愉悦体验包含审美过程中自动化加工阶段的审美愉悦和控制加工阶段的审美兴趣。近年来, 神经美学研究表明, 负责愉悦和奖赏的眶额叶皮层在审美过程中广泛激活, 是自动化加工阶段初级审美愉悦奖赏的神经基础, 而审美过程中纹状体亚回路中不同的连接和功能作用与两个阶段中审美愉悦的产生都有关联; 上述结果支持了审美愉悦-兴趣模型。但审美高峰体验时默认模式网络(DMN)相关脑区的激活和负责控制与理性思维的外侧前额叶皮层等脑区的失活, 提示在PIA模型强调的自动化加工阶段审美愉悦和控制加工阶段审美兴趣之上, 还有整合升华阶段的审美沉浸愉悦, PIA模型需得到进一步的扩展。未来研究应进一步检验审美愉悦认知加工模型及神经机制, 探索审美对创造力的影响机制和神经基础, 探讨不同审美经验愉悦机制的异同。     

论庄子“万物一齐”的生态审美观

当先秦诸子大都以人的理解为中心去看待人与自然万物的存在方式,认为万物只是相对于人来说才具有存在的价值和意义时,庄子站在古典存在论的立场上提出了含有生态审美智慧的“万物一齐”观,即“休乎天钧”的生态和谐理念、“为是不用而寓诸庸”的生态价值观念、“万物与我为一”的生态共生气象。其“万物一齐”的生态审美观所蕴涵的万物平等共生、放弃自我中心、无用之用等观念有助于当代的生态伦理和生态实践建设。     

大众与个人审美品位的认知与神经机制

大众与个人的审美品位分别代表了审美活动在个体间的一致性和差异性。将大众品位和个人品位相结合的新趋势正在挑战传统的"普遍性"审美法则,并日益凸显审美反应的个体差异。存在诸多因素可以调节大众和个人审美品位的相对比例,包括刺激类型、专业性、文化背景、先前经验和年龄等。大众与个人审美品位的神经机制中,奖赏系统和默认模式网络扮演重要角色。目前,审美品位与审美加工模型的理论关系有待进一步厘清和验证。未来相关研究可以在拓展审美对象领域、完善大众与个人审美品位与不同审美加工阶段的对应关系等方向上继续开展。     

Sleeping beauty and the dynamics of de se beliefs

This paper examines three accounts of the sleeping beauty case: an account proposed by Adam Elga, an account proposed by David Lewis, and a third account defended in this paper. It provides two reasons for preferring the third account. First, this account does a good job of capturing the temporal continuity of our beliefs, while the accounts favored by Elga and Lewis do not. Second, Elga’s and Lewis’ treatments of the sleeping beauty case lead to highly counterintuitive consequences. The proposed account also leads to counterintuitive consequences, but they’re not as bad as those of Elga’s account, and no worse than those of Lewis’ account.

Nuanced aesthetic emotions: emotion differentiation is related to knowledge of the arts and curiosity

The ability to distinguish between emotions is considered indicative of well-being, but does emotion differentiation (ED) in an aesthetic context also reflect deeper and more knowledgeable aesthetic experiences? Here we examine whether positive and negative ED in response to artistic stimuli reflects higher fluency in an aesthetic domain. Particularly, we test whether knowledge of the arts and curiosity are associated with more fine-grained positive and negative aesthetic experiences. A sample of 214 people rated their positive and negative feelings in response to various artworks including positive and negative themes. Positive ED was associated with the embracing sub-trait of curiosity that reflects engagement and enjoyment of novelty and complexity, but was unrelated to artistic knowledge and perceived comprehension. Negative ED was associated with higher curiosity and particularly more knowledge of the arts. This relationship was mediated by appraised comprehension suggesting that deeper engagement with art, by those with more art knowledge, is associated with more fine-grained emotional experiences. This finding extends ED beyond well-being research and suggests that more nuanced emotional experiences are more likely for those with expertise in the arts and motivation for exploration.     

Beauty in the blink of an eye: The time course of aesthetic experiences

Under normal circumstances, perception runs very fast and seemingly automatic. In just a few ms, we go from sensory features to perceiving objects. This fast time course does not only apply to general perceptual aspects but also to what we call higher-level judgements. Inspired by the study on ‘very first impressions’ by Bar, Neta, and Linz (2006, Emotion, 6 , 269) the current research examined the speed and time course of three aspects of the aesthetic experience, namely beauty, specialness, and impressiveness. Participants were presented with 54 reproductions of paintings that covered a wide variety of artistic styles and contents. Presentation times were 10, 50, 100 and 500 ms in Experiment 1 and 20, 30 and 40 ms in Experiment 2. Our results not only show that consistent aesthetic judgements can be formed based on very brief glances of information, but that this speed of aesthetic impression formation also differs between different aesthetic judgements. Apparently, impressiveness judgements require longer exposure times than impressions of beauty or specialness. The results provide important evidence for our understanding of the time course of aesthetic experiences.     

Bigger is better: the influence of physical size on aesthetic preference judgments

The hypothesis that the physical size of an object can influence aesthetic preferences was investigated. In a series of four experiments, participants were presented with pairs of abstract stimuli and asked to indicate which member of each pair they preferred. A preference for larger stimuli was found on the majority of trials using various types of stimuli, stimuli of various sizes, and with both adult and 3‐year‐old participants. This preference pattern was disrupted only when participants had both stimuli that provided a readily accessible alternative source of preference‐evoking information and sufficient attentional resources to make their preference judgments. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

音乐的神经美学：从审美反应到神经基础

近年来, 随着音乐的神经科学与神经美学的发展, 逐渐形成一个新的研究领域, 即音乐的神经美学。这一研究领域关注音乐审美的心理过程和神经机制, 将注意力集中于音乐审美活动中的感知、认知和情感解释。音乐审美加工引起了相应的审美反应, 其中有三种音乐审美反应得到研究者更多的关注, 即音乐审美情绪、判断与偏好。研究者围绕这三种反应, 对音乐审美反应的知觉、认知、情绪加工和影响因素以及其神经机制展开研究。这些研究为我们理解音乐和美学的行为与神经机制提供了经验性证据。     

Perceptual fluency effects in judgments of creativity and beauty: creative objects are perceived fluently yet they are visually complex

ABSTRACT

Perceptual fluency typically has a positive influence on aesthetic evaluations of beauty, but few studies have examined its influence on creativity evaluations. Creativity has two facets, originality and quality. If creativity judgments involve estimating product originality, such judgments may be associated with perceptual disfluency, while product quality may be associated with perceptual fluency. We examined the relationship between perceptual fluency and judgments of creativity and beauty across seven experiments. Creativity judgments were affected by most perceptual fluencysources. We observed a highly-fluent-is-beautiful-and-creative relation when testing repeated exposure and figure-ground contrast. Prototypicality displayed a high-fluency–is-beautiful relation, with creativity judgments unaffected. Visual complexity displayed a consistent disfluent-is-creative effect, with mixed results for beauty. For creativity (but not beauty) evaluations, increased saliency of visual complexity led to discounting fluent-is-creative effects, supporting the hypothesis that there are at least two fluency pathways to creativity judgments that take both originality and quality into account.     

The embodiment of beauty: Evidence from viewing Chinese concrete words and pictographs

How is beauty embodied? According to the viewpoint of embodied cognition, the aesthetic processing of words or pictographs has roots in their referential archetypes. Four experiments tested whether the beauty of referential archetypes was routinely activated during the explicit and implicit aesthetic evaluations of the font structures of concrete Chinese words and pictographs in congruent or incongruent font colour. Results showed font structures of simplified Chinese words and pictographs were judged to be more beautiful when they referred to beautiful archetypes; and this pattern was reversed when they referred to ugly archetypes. Moreover, judgement was facilitated when font colour was congruent for Chinese words and pictographs referred to beautiful archetypes. For those referred to ugly archetypes, judgement was inhibited in congruent font colour but facilitated in incongruent font colour, suggesting aesthetic perceptions of the font structures of Chinese words and pictographs were derived from their referential natural objects. The spontaneous generation hypothesis of beauty is proposed to account for these findings.     

Readiness to accept Western standard of beauty and body satisfaction among Muslim girls with and without hijab

The purpose of this paper was to determine whether there is a difference in the readiness to accept Western standards of beauty in which thinness is an ideal of beauty and attractiveness, as well in body and appearance satisfaction between Muslim adolescent girls attending madrassa and dressing in accordance with tradition, that is to say wearing hijab, and Muslim adolescent girls who do not wear hijab and who follow contemporary Western‐influenced fashion trends. Both of these groups were also compared to a non‐Muslim group of adolescent girls. The sample consisted of 75 Muslim adolescent girls with hijab, 75 Muslim adolescent girls without hijab and 75 Orthodox adolescent girls. The following instruments were used: the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT‐26), the Sociocultural Attitudes towards Appearance Questionnaire (SATAQ‐3) and the Contour Drawing Rating Scale (CDRS). The highest level of body satisfaction (despite this group having the highest body weight in the sample) was evident among Muslim adolescent girls attending madrassa and wearing hijab. They also showed significantly less pressure to attain the Western thin‐ideal standards of beauty than adolescent girls who accept Western way of dressing. Research results indicate a significant role of socio‐cultural factors in one's attitude towards the body image, but also opens the question of the role of religion as a protective factor when it comes to the body and appearance attitude among Muslim women who wear hijab.     

Strategy choice for arithmetic verification: effects of numerical surface form

Canadian university students (n=48) solved simple addition problems in a true/false verification task with equations in digit format (3+4=8) or written English format (three+four=eight). Participants reported their solution strategy (e.g. retrieval or calculation) after each trial. Reported use of calculation strategies was much greater with word (41%) than digit stimuli (26%), and this difference was exaggerated for numerically larger problems. Word-format costs on reaction time (RT) were correspondingly greater for large than for small problems, but this Format×Size RT effect was bigger for true than for false equations. The results demonstrate that surface format affects central, rather than only peripheral, stages of cognitive arithmetic.     

Integrating the philosophy and psychology of aesthetic experience: development of the aesthetic experience scale

This study assessed the dynamic relationship between person and object in aesthetic experience. Patterns of the structure of aesthetic experience were derived from a conceptual model based on philosophical and psychological ideas. These patterns were further informed by interviewing individuals with extensive involvement in aesthetic activities and 25 secondary students. Accordingly, patterns were tested by developing a large pool of items attempting to identify measurable structural components of aesthetic experience. Refined first in a pilot study, the 36-item questionnaire was administered to 652 Greek students, aged from 13 to 15 years. Correlation matrices and exploratory factor analyses on principal components were used to examine internal structural relationships. The obliquely rotated five-factor solution of the refined instrument accounted for the 44.1% of the total variance and was combatible with the conceptual model of aesthetic experience, indicating the plausibility of both. The internal consistency of the items was adequate and external correlational analysis offered preliminary support for subsequent development of a self-report measure that serves to operationalize the major constructs of aesthetic experience in the general adolescent population. The results also raise theoretical issues for those interested in empirical aesthetics, suggesting that in experiential functioning, expressive perception and affect may play a more constructive role in cognitive processes than is generally acknowledged.