On the Role of Mentalizing Processes in Aesthetic Appreciation: An ERP Study.

Front Hum Neurosci

Experimental Psychology Unit, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg Hamburg, Germany.

Published: November 2015

We used event-related brain potentials to explore the impact of mental perspective taking on processes of aesthetic appreciation of visual art. Participants (non-experts) were first presented with information about the life and attitudes of a fictitious artist. Subsequently, they were cued trial-wise to make an aesthetic judgment regarding an image depicting a piece of abstract art either from their own perspective or from the imagined perspective of the fictitious artist [i.e., theory of mind (ToM) condition]. Positive self-referential judgments were made more quickly and negative self-referential judgments were made more slowly than the corresponding judgments from the imagined perspective. Event-related potential analyses revealed significant differences between the two tasks both within the preparation period (i.e., during the cue-stimulus interval) and within the stimulus presentation period. For the ToM condition we observed a relative centro-parietal negativity during the preparation period (700-330 ms preceding picture onset) and a relative centro-parietal positivity during the stimulus presentation period (700-1100 ms after stimulus onset). These findings suggest that different subprocesses are involved in aesthetic appreciation and judgment of visual abstract art from one's own vs. from another person's perspective.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4643139PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00600DOI Listing

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