Evidence from visual-search experiments is discussed that indicates that there is spatially parallel encoding based on three-dimensional (3-D) spatial relations between complex image features. In one paradigm, subjects had to detect an odd part of cube-like figures, formed by grouping of corner junctions. Performance with cube-like figures was unaffected by the number of corner junctions present, though performance was affected when the corners did not configure into a cube. It is suggested from the data that junctions can be grouped (...) to form 3-D shapes in a spatially parallel manner. Further, performance with cube-like figures was more robust to noncollinearity between junctions than was performance when junctions grouped to form two-dimensional planes. In the second paradigm, subjects searched for targets defined by their size. Performance was affected by a size illusion, induced by linear-perspective cues from local background neighbourhoods. Search was made more efficient when the size illusion was consistent with the real size difference between targets and nontargets, and it was made less efficient when the size illusion was inconsistent with the real size difference. This last result occurred even though search was little affected by the display size in a control condition. We suggest that early, parallel visual processes are influenced by 3-D spatial relations between visual elements, that grouping based on 3-D spatial relations is relatively robust to noncollinearity between junctions, and that, at least in some circumstances, 3-D relations dominate those coded in two-dimensions. (shrink)

The role of pictures and visual modes of presentation of data in science is a topic of increasing interest to workers in artificial intelligence, problem solving, and scientists in all fields who must deal with large quantities of complex multidimensional data. Drawing on studies of animal motion, aerodynamics, morphological transformations, the history of linkage mapping, and the analysis of deterministic chaos, I focus on the strengths and limitations of our visual system, the analysis of problems particularly suited to (...) visualization-the analysis of similarities and differences between complex objects, and problems making conjoint use of information from several complex images. (shrink)

How can aesthetic enquiry contribute to the study of visual culture? There seems to be little doubt that aesthetic theory ought to be of interest to the study of visual culture. For one thing, aesthetic vocabulary has far from vanished from contemporary debates on the nature of our visual experiences and its various shapes, a fact especially pertinent where dissatisfaction with vulgar value relativism prevails. Besides, the very question ubiquitous in the debates on visual culture of (...) what is natural and what is acquired in our visual experiences has been a topic in aesthetics at least since the Enlightenment. And last but not least, despite attempts to study visual culture without employing the concept of art, there is no prospect of this central subject of aesthetic theory ebbing away from visual studies. The essays compiled in this volume show a variety of points of intersection and involvement between aesthetics and visual studies; some consider the future of visual art, some the conditions and characteristics of contemporary visual aesthetic experience, while others take on the difficult question of the relation between visual representation and reality. What unites them is their authors' willingness to think about contemporary visual culture in the conceptual frame of aesthetics. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophical aesthetics, art history, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 220 Seiten: 199-216.

To further develop three-dimensional (3D) applications, it is important to elucidate the negative effects of 3D applications on the human body and mind. Thus, this study investigated differences in the effects of visual fatigue on cognition and brain activity using visual and auditory tasks induced by watching a 1-h movie in two dimensions (2D) and 3D. Eighteen young men participated in this study. Two conditions were randomly performed for each participant on different days, namely, watching the 1-h (...) movie on television in 2D (control condition) and 3D (3D condition). Before and after watching the 1-h movie on television, critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF: an index of visual fatigue), and response accuracy and reaction time for the cognitive tasks were determined. Brain activity during the cognitive tasks was evaluated using a multi-channel near-infrared spectroscopy system. In contrast to the control condition, the decreased CFF, and the lengthened reaction time and the decreased activity around the right primary somatosensory cortex during Go/NoGo blocks in the visual task at post-viewing in the 3D condition were significant, with significant repeated measures correlations among them. Meanwhile, in the auditory task, the changes in cognitive performance and brain activity during the Go/NoGo blocks were not significant in the 3D condition. These results suggest that the failure or delay in the transmission of visual information to the primary somatosensory cortex due to visual fatigue induced by watching a 3D movie reduced the brain activity around the primary somatosensory cortex, resulting in poor cognitive performance for the visual task. This suggests that performing tasks that require visual information, such as running in the dark or driving a car, immediately after using a 3D application, may create unexpected risks in our lives. Thus, the findings of this study will help outlining precautions for the use of 3D applications. (shrink)

The role of pictures and visual modes of presentation of data in science is a topic of increasing interest to workers in artificial intelligence, the psychology of problem solving, and increasing numbers of scientists in all fields who must deal with problems of how to represent large quantities of complex multidimensional data in an intelligible fashion. The use of pictures is marvelously illustrated by but not limited to the biological sciences, so I will use examples from elsewhere as appropriate. (...) With the development of our visual technology—television, videotape, and the computer, the uses (and misuses) of visualization has properly become a matter not only of theoretical but also of practical concern. I will start with a practical story because it has multiple morals, both practical and theoretical—most of which lead elsewhere than I wish to go here. (shrink)

Cowan defines a chunk as “a collection of concepts that have strong associations to one another and much weaker associations to other chunks currently in use.” This definition does not impose any constraints on the nature and number of elements that can be bound into a chunk. We present an experiment to demonstrate that such limitations exist for visual short-term memory, and that their analysis may lead to important insights into properties of visual memory.

A meta-analysis and an experiment show that the degree of compression of the in-depth dimension of visual space relative to the frontal dimension increases quickly as a function of the distance between the stimulus and the observer at first, but the rate of change slows beyond 7 m from the observer, reaching an apparent asymptote of about 50 %. In addition, the compression of visual space is greater for monocular and reduced cue conditions. The pattern of compression of (...) the in-depth dimension as a function of distance is similar to the ratio of in-depth to frontal visual angles of stimuli, but is not as extreme as this ratio would suggest, implying that observers are incapable of fully ignoring size information provided by cues to depth. Size and distance judgments may be described by an Affine transformation of physical space; however, the compression parameter in this model changes as a function of distance from the observer and other experimental conditions. (shrink)

This paper proposes to define metaphor as a visual-material structure, the sphere of which is ontological rather than cognitive or conceptual. It argues that the essence of metaphor, as either an aesthetic or a communicative unit or both, resides in the qualitative dimension and appearance, or even materiality, of the metaphorical medium and its form. The paper thus offers a new theory of metaphor, focusing on the medium of metaphor, which composes and transfigures or reconstructs its target anew: a (...) composition that is prior to understanding or conceptualizing the target. In doing so, the paper presents a formalist ontology of metaphors, established via an externalist account of metaphors, as opposed to the prevailing cognitivist-conceptualist account which I characterize as internalist. The various kinds of metaphor – linguistic, poetic, visual or material – are based on their external structure, rather than an internal-conceptual mechanism of understanding, as assumed by a significant segment of the literature. Visual metaphor, therefore, is the paradigmatic kind of metaphor, the analysis of which can be generalized to other kinds of metaphor. Furthermore, the paper tries to overcome the current discrepancy between the formalist character of the metaphorical medium and the dominance of cognitivist and conceptualist theories of metaphor. Challenging these, I claim that if the identity of metaphor is indeed based on its composition, then it is actually based on its aesthetic qualities. That is to say, not only are there autonomous visual or material metaphors, that are not based on linguistic or conceptual ones, but linguistic and conceptual metaphors are based on visuality: they are enabled by the structural possibilities offered by visual media. (shrink)

The Archive is a central but paradoxical image in the work of the con temporary French artist Christian Boltanski (born 1944). Because Boltanski is obsessively concerned with the death-like rupture and loss by which experience is continuously reduced to fragmentary and inac curate memories of the past, especially regarding the adult's perception of childhood, archives represent for him a potential means of regaining access to what has been lost and is being mourned. However, Boltan ski's installation and performance works that (...) investigate the powers of archives set out ironically the absurdly limited and misleading processes of an archive. Photography in particular is shown to be unreliable, more icon than document, challenging rather than asserting notions of cat egory and coherence. The notion of the icon, moreover, underlines the spiritual dimension that accompanies this absurdist relationship with the past. Our faulty but much-desired awareness of a past gives complex value to our present, often in a touching, pathetic way, however arbitrary the means involved. The trail of the archive leads to an uncertainty that is nonetheless precious. The many subjects that Boltanski treats in this light vary disarmingly and controversially from the trivia and detritus of everyday living to the supreme seriousness of the Holocaust. He also transforms himself and his family into a labyrinthine and playful archive. Here a curious relationship emerges with the reputation and books of his brother, the sociologist Luc Boltanski. Christian borrows with no explicit acknowledgement the archive resources of Luc's sociological research as a sub-text in his visual works. Even more surprisingly, Luc Boltanski published in 1993 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 11 No. 4 © 1998 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi) [0952-6951(199811)11:4;121-140; 006612]Poème, a collection of highly emotive and personal poetry about the past and the Holocaust. The problems raised by Christian Boltanski and by Luc conflate the personal and historical dimensions of the Archive. (shrink)

Four experiments investigated the extent to which abstract quantitative information can be conveyed by basic visual features. This was done by asking observers to estimate and discriminate Pearson correlation in graphical representations where the first data dimension of each element was encoded by its horizontal position, and the second by the value of one of its visual features; perceiving correlation then requires combining the information in the two encodings via a common abstract representation. Four visual features were (...) examined: luminance, color, orientation, and size. All were able to support the perception of correlation. Indeed, despite the strikingly different appearances of the associated stimuli, all gave rise to performance that was much the same: just noticeable difference was a linear function of distance from complete correlation, and estimated correlation a logarithmic function of this distance. Performance differed only in regards to the level of noise in the feature, with these values compatible with estimates of channel capacity encountered in classic experiments on absolute perceptual magnitudes. These results suggest that quantitative information can be conveyed by visual features that are abstracted at relatively low levels of visual processing, with little representation of the original sensory property. It is proposed that this is achieved via an abstract parameter space in which the values in each perceptual dimension are normalized to have the same means and variances, with perceived correlation based on the shape of the joint probability density function of the resultant elements. (shrink)

Recent philosophical analyses of the epistemic dimension of images in the sciences show a certain trend in acknowledging potential roles of these images beyond their merely decorative or pedagogical functions. We argue, however, that this new debate has yet paid little attention to a special type of pictures, we call ‘visual metaphor’, and its versatile heuristic potential in organizing data, supporting communication, and guiding research, modeling, and theory formation. Based on a case study of Conrad Hal Waddington’s epigenetic landscape (...) images in biology, we develop a descriptive framework applicable to heuristic roles of various visual metaphors in the sciences. (shrink)

This paper argues that, assuming some widely held views about how vision justifies beliefs, there is an important epistemic asymmetry between visual perception and the perception of bodily sensations. This asymmetry arises when we consider the epistemic significance of the distinction between low-level and high-level properties in perceptual experience. I argue that a distinction exists between low-level and high-level properties of bodily sensations which parallels that distinction in the objects of visual experience. I then survey evidence revealing systematic (...) unreliability in an important dimension of our perception of low-level bodily sensational properties. I argue that this unreliability results in an epistemic asymmetry with vision. I conclude by sketching some implications of this asymmetry for developing a general, unified theory of perceptual justification. (shrink)

Although the existence of implicit motor learning is now widely accepted, the findings concerning perceptual implicit learning are ambiguous. Some researchers have observed perceptual learning whereas other authors have not. The review of the literature provides different reasons to explain this ambiguous picture, such as differences in the underlying learning processes, selective attention, or differences in the difficulty to express this knowledge. In three experiments, we investigated implicit visual learning within the original serial reaction time task. We used different (...) response devices in order to manipulate selective attention towards response dimensions. Results showed that visual and motor sequence learning differed in terms of RT-benefits, but not in terms of the amount of knowledge assessed after training. Furthermore, visual sequence learning was modulated by selective attention. However, the findings of all three experiments suggest that selective attention did not alter implicit but rather explicit learning processes. (shrink)

Individuals often describe objects in their world in terms of perceptual dimensions that span a variety of modalities; the visual (e.g., brightness: dark–bright), the auditory (e.g., loudness: quiet–loud), the gustatory (e.g., taste: sour–sweet), the tactile (e.g., hardness: soft vs. hard) and the kinaesthetic (e.g., speed: slow–fast). We ask whether individuals use perceptual dimensions to differentiate emotions from one another. Participants in two studies (one where respondents reported on abstract emotion concepts and a second where they reported on (...) specific emotion episodes) rated the extent to which features anchoring 29 perceptual dimensions (e.g., temperature, texture and taste) are associated with 8 emotions (anger, fear, sadness, guilt, contentment, gratitude, pride and excitement). Results revealed that in both studies perceptual dimensions differentiate positive from negative emotions and high arousal from low arousal emotions. They also differentiate among emotions that are similar in arousal and valence (e.g., high arousal negative emotions such as anger and fear). Specific features that anchor particular perceptual dimensions (e.g., hot vs. cold) are also differentially associated with emotions. (shrink)

Drawing from ethnographic, empirical, and historical / cultural perspectives, we examine the extent to which visual aspects of music contribute to the communication that takes place between performers and their listeners. First, we introduce a framework for understanding how media and genres shape aural and visual experiences of music. Second, we present case studies of two performances, and describe the relation between visual and aural aspects of performance. Third, we report empirical evidence that visual aspects of (...) performance reliably influence perceptions of musical structure and affective interpretations of music. Finally, we trace new and old media trajectories of aural and visual dimensions of music, and highlight how our conceptions, perceptions and appreciation of music are intertwined with technological innovation and media deployment strategies. (shrink)

Humans have been exploring colors since ancient times, but relatively complete color systems appeared one after another in the twentieth century. Even without language and other information exchanges, colors can still convey information and stimulate emotions. Therefore, color can have both physical and psychological effects on people. In this context, this paper studies the visual representation of painting colors based on psychological factors. The article studies the theory of personality traits and introduces the related content of visual psychology. (...) To explore the relationship between each variable and color psychology and the visual representation of painting colors, a binary logistic regression analysis is performed. The colors in the post-impressionist paintings of Van Gogh and Gauguin is contrasted, and experiments on psychological factors and color research is conducted. The factors that affect the color tone of the picture and the influence of psychological factors on the judgment of color brightness are investigated. Finally, the correlation analysis of personality trait dimension and irrational behavior is carried out. The experimental results of the article show that after the analysis of variance, the significance levels of regression model 1 and model 2 both reach 0.000, and the adjusted R squares are 0.319 and 0.356, respectively. In this study, regression model 2 was selected as the final model. According to Model 2, the standardized regression coefficients of agreeableness and neuroticism are 0.438 and -0.251, respectively, and the significance of the regression coefficients are 0.000 and 0.021, respectively. The research on the visual performance of painting colors based on psychological factors has been well completed. (shrink)

Recent philosophical analyses of the epistemic dimension of images in the sciences show a certain trend in acknowledging potential roles of these images beyond their merely decorative or pedagogical functions. We argue, however, that this new debate has yet paid little attention to a special type of pictures, we call ‘visual metaphor’, and its versatile heuristic potential in organizing data, supporting communication, and guiding research, modeling, and theory formation. Based on a case study of Conrad Hal Waddington’s epigenetic landscape (...) images in biology, we develop a descriptive framework applicable to heuristic roles of various visual metaphors in the sciences. (shrink)

What are the factors that contribute to (or inhibit) diachronic sound change? While acoustically motivated sound changes are well documented, research on the articulatory and audiovisual-perceptual aspects of sound change is limited. This paper investigates the interaction of articulatory variation and audiovisual speech perception in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS), a pattern of sound change observed in the Great Lakes region of the United States. We focus specifically on the maintenance of the contrast between the vowels /ɑ/ and /ɔ/, (...) both of which are fronted as a result of the NCVS. We present results from two experiments designed to test how the NCVS is produced and perceived. In the first experiment, we present data from an articulatory and acoustic analysis of the production of fronted /ɑ/ and /ɔ/. We find that some speakers distinguish /ɔ/ from /ɑ/ with a combination of both tongue position and lip rounding, while others do so using either tongue position or lip rounding alone. For speakers who distinguish /ɔ/ from /ɑ/ along only one articulatory dimension, /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are acoustically more similar than for speakers who produce multiple articulatory distinctions. While all three groups of speakers maintain some degree of acoustic contrast between the vowels, the question is raised as to whether these articulatory strategies differ in their perceptibility. In the perception experiment, we test the hypothesis that visual speech cues play a role in maintaining contrast between the two sounds. The results of this experiment suggest that articulatory configurations in which /ɔ/ is produced with unround lips are perceptually weaker than those in which /ɔ/ is produced with rounding, even though these configurations result in acoustically similar output. We argue that these findings have implications for theories of sound change and variation in at least two respects: 1) visual cues can shape phonological systems through misperception-based sound change, and 2) phonological systems may be optimized not only for auditory but also for visual perceptibility. (shrink)

Visually impaired people have unique perceptions of and usage requirements for various urban spaces. Therefore, understanding these perceptions can help create reasonable layouts and construct urban infrastructure. This study recruited 26 visually impaired volunteers to evaluate 24 sound environments regarding clarity, comfort, safety, vitality, and depression. This data was collected in seven different types of urban spaces. An independent sample non-parametric test was used to determine the significance of the differences between environmental evaluation results for each evaluation dimension and to (...) summarize the compositions of sound and space elements in the positive and negative influence spaces. The results suggested that visually impaired people feel comfort, safety, and clarity in parks, residential communities, and shopping streets; have negative perceptions of vegetable markets, bus stops, hospitals, and urban departments; feel anxious when traffic sounds, horn sounds, manhole cover sounds, and construction sounds occur; and prefer spaces away from traffic, with fewer and slower vehicles, with a suitable space scale, and moderate crowd density. These results provide a reference for the future design of activity venues and the planning of accessibility systems for visually impaired urban residents. (shrink)

Natural environments have a restorative effect from mental/attentional fatigue, prevent stress, and help to revitalize psychological and physical resources. These benefits are crucial for promoting active aging, which is particularly relevant given the phenomenon of population aging in recent decades. To be considered restorative, green spaces have to meet specific requirements in ecological and psychological terms that can be assessed through Post-Occupancy Evaluation, a multimethod approach commonly used by environmental psychologists and landscape architects after construction to evaluate the design outcomes (...) from the users’ perspective. Generally, POEs consist of surveys and/or interviews accompanied by more or less structured observations of onsite users’ behavior. Despite this, various practical constraints can prevent physical access to the renovated area. Exploiting digital tools for such an assessment can be a crucial support in such circumstances. The current study presents the visual POE of a restorative garden for older adults in Milan, Italy. We developed a web application, that includes the exp-EIA© patented method, which allows participants to virtually explore a visual simulation of the environment and provide their feedback. We identified 3 representative viewpoints in the redeveloped garden differing from each other for the functions and the design principles that inspired the transformation. For each point of view, we created 360° Virtual Reality photographs, that can be navigated by looking around, i.e., panning, from the standing point of each view. In connection to each virtual scene, a survey was conducted. The focus was the psychological experience related to each viewpoint, assessed with two psychometric scales investigating the constructs of emotions and restoration ; such information is integrated with behavioral aspects, including the main activities prefigured by participants and their visual exploration of the VR photography. The results of the virtual exploration show that the garden is perceived as restorative, with a more intense effect in a spot purposely designed. The emotions experienced in the garden are positive and a mild level of arousal is observed. The behavioral dimension is characterized by predominantly contemplative activities and contact with nature. A cartographic representation of the psychological and behavioral data is developed, to support the maintenance of the garden. (shrink)

For a large proportion of our daily lives, spontaneously occurring thoughts tend to disengage our minds from goal-directed thinking. Previous studies showed that EEG features such as the P3 and alpha oscillations can predict mind-wandering to some extent, but only with accuracies of around 60%. A potential candidate for improving prediction accuracy is the Steady-State Visual Evoked Potential, which is used frequently in single-trial contexts such as brain-computer interfaces as a marker of the direction of attention. In this study, (...) we modified the sustained attention to response task that is usually employed to measure spontaneous thought to incorporate the SSVEP elicited by a 12.5-Hz flicker. We then examined whether the SSVEP could track and allow for the prediction of the stickiness and task-relatedness dimensions of spontaneous thought. Our results show that the SSVEP evoked by flickering words was able to distinguish between more and less sticky thinking but not between whether a participant was on- or off-task. This suggests that the SSVEP is able to track spontaneous thinking when it is strongly disengaged from the task but not off-task thought in general. Future research should determine the exact dimensions of spontaneous thought to which the SSVEP is most sensitive. (shrink)

Given their salience in many sports and physical cultures, it is surprising that the practices, processes and production of intercorporeality and ‘doing together’ remain under-explored from a sociological perspective. The ongoing achievement of ‘togethering’ can be particularly important for the embodied partnership between a visually impaired (VI) runner and a sighted guide (SG) runner: a specific sporting dyad whose experiences are currently under-researched. To address this lacuna and contribute original insights to sensory sociological studies, here we explore the accomplishment of (...) running-together by VI runners and sighted guides, focusing on the auditory dimension. To illustrate how these runners put the sense of hearing ‘to work’ in achieving finely attuned intercorporeality, often at considerable speed, we draw on qualitative data from a research project on VI running in the UK, involving five VI runners and five SGs. Here, we focus on auditory attunement in two domains identified as highly salient in the running-partners’ intercorporeal experiences: (1) Listening out – auditory attention to non-linguistic sounds; and (2) Tuning in – the importance of attending to team-talk between VI runners and SG runners. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyse and compare the graphic elements present on book covers published in Croatia from 2012 to 2018, and compare the data with the graphic elements on book covers from five other European book markets. Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions was used in the research to examine the ways in which the design of book covers is influenced by culture. The graphic elements on book covers from Croatia and a sample of five European (...) countries were compared using the visual content analysis method. Element frequency scores were correlated with indexes from Hofstede’s model of national culture and interpreted on the basis of the existing literature using the chi-squared test. Both the quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out on the sample of 633 book covers. (shrink)

Representation of similarities is not sufficient for most visual tasks. The proposed framework collapses useful dimensions such as position and pose for the sake of naming the object. Collapsing these dimensions leaves no representation of the object itself, but only an internal name that cannot be meaningfully manipulated.

The proposed volumes are aimed at a multidisciplinary audience and seek to fill the gap between law, semiotics and visuality providing a comprehensive theoretical and analytical overview of legal visual semiotics. They seek to promote an interdisciplinary debate from law, semiotics and visuality bringing together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a prelude to identifying fertile avenues for research going forward. Advance Praise for Law, Culture and Visual Studies This diverse and exhilarating collection of essays (...) explores the many facets both historical and contemporary of visual culture in the law. It opens a window onto the substantive, jurisdictional, disciplinary and methodological diversity of current research. It is a cornucopia of materials that will enliven legal studies for those new to the field as well as for established scholars. It is a 'must read' that will leave you wondering about the validity of the long held obsession that reduces the law and legal studies to little more than a preoccupation with the word. Leslie J Moran Professor of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London Law, Culture and Visual Studies is a treasure trove of insights on the entwined roles of legality and visuality. From multiple interdisciplinary perspectives by scholars from around the world, these pieces reflect the fullness and complexities of our visual encounters with law and culture. From pictures to places to postage stamps, from forensics to film to folklore, this anthology is an exciting journey through the fertile field of law and visual culture as well as a testament that the field has come of age. Naomi Mezey, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., USA This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse fields including cultural studies, communication theory, rhetoric, law and film studies, legal and social history, visual and legal theory, in order to document the various historical, cultural, representational and theoretical links that bind together law and the visual. This book offers a breath-taking range of resources from both well-established and newer scholars who together cover the field of law's representation in, interrogation of, and dialogue with forms of visual rhetoric, practice, and discourse. Taken together this scholarship presents state of the art research into an important and developing dimension of contemporary legal and cultural inquiry. Above all, Law Culture and Visual Studies lays the groundwork for rethinking the nature of law in our densely visual culture: How are legal meanings produced, encoded, distributed, and decoded? What critical and hermeneutic skills, new or old, familiar or unfamiliar, will be needed? Topical, diverse, and enlivening, Law Culture and Visual Studies is a vital research tool and an urgent invitation to further critical thinking in the areas so well laid out in this collection. Desmond Manderson, Future Fellow, ANU College of Law / Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University, Australia. (shrink)

It has been claimed that the ability to remember the past and the ability to project oneself into the future are intimately related. We sought support for this proposition by examining whether individual differences in dimensions that have been shown to affect memory for past events similarly influence the experience of projecting oneself into the future. We found that individuals with a higher capacity for visual imagery experienced more visual and other sensory details both when remembering past (...) events and when imagining future events. In addition, individuals who habitually use suppression to regulate their emotions experienced fewer sensory, contextual, and emotional details when representing both past and future events, while the use of reappraisal had no effect on either kind of events. These findings are consistent with the view that mental time travel into the past and into the future relies on similar mechanisms. (shrink)

The article’s aim is to present plastic semiotics, one of the most recent branches of the Greimassian School. In his Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method (1966) Algirdas Julius Greimas stated that sensorial perception was the dimension in which the grasping of meaning takes place, but explicit principles of the analysis of this nonlinguistic dimension were published only years later, in his article “Figurative semiotics and plastic semiotics” (1984). Since then, plastic semiotics has been leading independent existence, focused on (...) the eff ects of sense generated by the form and the substance of expression. Plastic analysis has turned out to be a fruitful approach not only in the field of visual studies, but also in the research into other sensorial expressions.Статья знакомит с одной из наиболее молодых ветвей греймасовской семиотики – пластической. В книге Греймаса ≪Структурная семантика: поиск метода≫ (1966) чувственное восприятие было определено как измерение, в котором осуществляется схватывание смысла/значения. Основы анализа этого неязыкового измерения были изложены им позднее в статье ≪Фигуративная семиотика и пластическая семиотика≫ (1984). С тех пор пластическая семиотика превратилась в самостоятельную дисциплину, которая фокусируется на сенсорных эффектах смысла, произведенных формой и сущностью выражения. Пластический анализ оказался плодотворным подходом не только в области визуальных исследований, но и в исследованиях других сенсорных выражений.Artikli eesmargiks on tutvustada plastilist semiootikat, uht Greimase koolkonna uuemat haru. Greimase teoses “Strukturaalne semantika: meetodi otsingul” (1966) nimetati meeletaju selleks mootmeks, milles leiab aset tahenduse tabamine. Selle mittekeelelise mootme analuusi sonaselged pohimotted ilmusid aga aastaid hiljem Greimase artiklis “Figuratiivne semiootika ja plastiline semiootika”. Sestsaadik on plastiline semiootika muutunud iseseisvaks distsipliiniks, keskendudes meelelistele tagajargedele, mida tekitavad valjenduse vorm ja sisu. Plastiline analuus on osutunud viljakandvaks lahenemiseks mitte uksnes visuaaluuringute vallas, vaid ka teiste meeleliste valjenduste uurimisel. (shrink)

Experimental phenomenology has demonstrated that perception is much richer than stimulus. As is seen in color perception, one and the same stimulus provides more than several modes of appearance or perceptual dimensions. Similarly, there are various perceptual dimensions in form perception. Even a simple geometrical figure inducing visual illusion gives not only perceptual impressions of size, shape, slant, depth, and orientation, but also affective or aesthetic impressions. The present study reviews our experimental phenomenological work on visual (...) illusion and experimental aesthetics, and examines how aesthetic preference is influenced by stimulus factors determining visual illusions including anomalous surface and transparency as well as geometrical illusion. Along with line figures producing geometrical illusions, illusory surface figures inducing neon color spreading and transparency effects were used as test patterns. Participants made both of psychophysical judgments and of aesthetic judgments for the same test pattern. Both of geometrical illusions and aesthetic preferences were found to change similarly as a function of stimulus variables such as the number of filling lines and the size ratio of the inner and outer figural components. Also, following specific stimulus variables such as lightness contrast ratio and spatial interval between inducing figural elements (so called ``packmen''), strong effects of color spreading and transparency were accompanied with strong preferences. It seems that the paradigm to investigate aesthetic phenomena along with perceptual dimensions is useful to bridge the gap between experimental phenomenology and experimental aesthetics. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of the “Visual Awareness Education Programme” developed to support the visual literacy skills of preschool children. The study group comprised 40 children (20 children in the experimental group and 20 children in the control group) attending preschool in the 2014–2015 school year. The pre-test post-test experimental model was used in the study. The “Visual Literacy Inventory for Preschool Children” and the “Children’s Visual Literacy Rating Inventory (...) for Parents” were used to determine visual literacy level of children. Study results revealed significant differences in favour of the experimental group children in the sub-dimensions and the post-test scores of the “Visual Literacy Inventory for Preschool Children” and the post-test scores of the “Children’s Visual Literacy Rating Inventory for Parents”. (shrink)

Visual space can be distinguished from physical space. The first is found in visual experience, while the second is defined independently of perception. Theorists have wondered about the relation between the two. Some investigators have concluded that visual space is non-Euclidean, and that it does not have a single metric structure. Here it is argued that visual space exhibits contraction in all three dimensions with increasing distance from the observer, that experienced features of this contraction (...) are not the same as would be the experience of a perspective projection onto a fronto-parallel plane, and that such contraction is consistent with size constancy. These properties of visual space are different from those that would be predicted if spatial perception resulted from the successful solution of the inverse problem. They are consistent with the notion that optical constraints have been internalized. More generally, they are also consistent with the notion that visual spatial structures bear a resemblance relation to physical spatial structures. This notion supports a type of representational relation that is distinct from mere causal correspondence. The reticence of some philosophers and psychologists to discuss the structure of phenomenal space is diagnosed in terms of the simple materialism and the functionalism of the 1970s and 1980s. (shrink)

This article proposes a semio-rhetorical epistemology for visual documents, one capable of accounting for both their internal configuration, which we shall call the compositional dimension, and their persuasive force within public space, or their rhetorical dimension. The field of reference will be that of identity-related images on social networks, because compared to other kinds of images, such as artistic or professional ones, they adopt new compositional solutions and new dynamics of circulation. To test this theoretical framework, we will conduct (...) an analysis which has never been carried out in semiotics and which, as far as we know, remains very rare even in the overall field of visual studies, that is, the analysis of the profile of an Instagram influencer’s visual production, that of Canadian artist Rupi Kaur. Taking into account the flow of images shared over time, we will focus primarily on the compositional dimension that articulates the specificity of the language of images. The most appropriate model for investigating social network photos seems to be that of the portrait, thanks to which we will identify a first series of regularities and deviations. Secondly, we will turn towards the rhetorical dimension – the persuasive strategies found within, through, and towards images – focusing on the analysis of a single photo: on the one hand, it is a shot which presents greater compositional richness than others; on the other hand, it has greatly impacted the notoriety of the influencer, due to the censorship incurred on Instagram, its abundant coverage by traditional media, and the heated debate it triggered on social media. We will thus propose a reinterpretation of Paul Ricœur’s theory of identity in order to balance the rhetorical and the compositional dimensions through a unitary theoretical hypothesis. Visual identity on social networks is always the result of a negotiation between two opposite tendencies: on the one hand, the experiential pressure expressed through images related to the body and everyday practices; on the other, the algorithmic pressure due to the delegation of the management of identity to software. The case of Rupi Kaur is a rare example of a critical mediation between these two pressures and helps us build a methodology for the examination of images belonging to other social domains. (shrink)

Aesthetic emotions are elicited by different sensory impressions generated by music, visual arts, literature, theater, film, or nature scenes. Recently, the AESTHEMOS scale has been developed to facilitate the empirical assessment of such emotions. In this article we report a semantic profile analysis of aesthetic emotion terms that had been used for the development of this scale, using the GRID approach. This method consists of obtaining ratings of emotion terms on a set of meaning facets which represent five components (...) of the emotion process. The aims here were to determine the dimensionality of the GRID features when applied to aesthetic emotions and compare it to published results for emotion terms in general, and to examine the internal organization of the domain of aesthetic emotion terms in order to identify salient clusters of these items based on the similarity of their feature profiles on the GRID. Exploratory Principal Component Analyses suggest a four-dimensional structure of the semantic space consisting of valence, power, arousal, and novelty, converging with earlier GRID studies on large sets of standard emotion terms. Using cluster analyses, 15 clusters of aesthetic emotion terms with similar GRID feature profiles were identified, revealing the internal organization of the aesthetic emotion terms domain and meaningful subgroups of aesthetic emotions. While replication for further languages is required, these findings provide a solid basis for further research and methodological development in the realm of aesthetic emotions. (shrink)

Bakhtin and the Visual Arts is the first book to assess the relevance of Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas as they relate to painting and sculpture. First published in the 1960s, Bakhtin's writings introduced the concepts of carnival and dialogue or dialogism, which have had significant impact in such diverse fields as literature and literary theory, philosophy, theology, biology, and psychology. In his four early aesthetic essays, written between 1919 and 1926, and before he began to focus on linguistic and literary (...) categories, Bakhtin worked on a larger philosophy of creativity, which was never completed. Deborah Haynes's in-depth study of his aesthetics, especially his theory of creativity, analyses its applicability to contemporary art theory and criticism. The author argues that Bakhtin, with such categories as answerability, outsideness and unfinalisability, offers a conceptual basis for interpreting the moral dimensions of creative activity. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom holds that Judaism is indifferent or even suspiciously hostile to the visual arts due to the Second Commandment's prohibition on creating "graven images," the dictates of monotheism, and historical happenstance. This intellectual history of medieval and modern Jewish attitudes toward art and representation overturns the modern assumption of Jewish iconophobia that denies to Jewish culture a visual dimension. Kalman Bland synthesizes evidence from medieval Jewish philosophy, mysticism, poetry, biblical commentaries, travelogues, and law, concluding that premodern Jewish (...) intellectuals held a positive, liberal understanding of the Second Commandment and did, in fact, articulate a certain Jewish aesthetic. He draws on this insight to consider modern ideas of Jewish art, revealing how they are inextricably linked to diverse notions about modern Jewish identity that are themselves entwined with arguments over Zionism, integration, and anti-Semitism. Through its use of the past to illuminate the present and its analysis of how the present informs our readings of the past, this book establishes a new assessment of Jewish aesthetic theory rooted in historical analysis. Authoritative and original in its identification of authentic Jewish traditions of painting, sculpture, and architecture, this volume will ripple the waters of several disciplines, including Jewish studies, art history, medieval and modern history, and philosophy. (shrink)