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Kaube H, Abdel Rahman R. Art perception is affected by negative knowledge about famous and unknown artists. Sci Rep 2024; 14:8143. [PMID: 38584222 PMCID: PMC10999426 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-58697-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/28/2023] [Accepted: 04/01/2024] [Indexed: 04/09/2024] Open
Abstract
The biographies of some celebrated artists are marked by accounts that paint a far from beautiful portrait. Does this negative-social knowledge influence the aesthetic experience of an artwork? Does an artist's fame protect their paintings from such an influence? We present two preregistered experiments examining the effect of social-emotional biographical knowledge about famous and unknown artists on the reception and perception of their paintings, using aesthetic ratings and neurocognitive measures. In Experiment 1, paintings attributed to artists characterised by negative biographical information were liked less, evoked greater feelings of arousal and were judged lower in terms of quality, than paintings by artists associated with neutral information. No modulation of artist renown was found. Experiment 2 fully replicated these behavioural results and revealed that paintings by artists associated with negative social-emotional knowledge also elicited enhanced early brain activity related to visual perception (P1) and early emotional arousal (early posterior negativity; EPN). Together, the findings suggest that negative knowledge about famous artists can shape not only explicit aesthetic evaluations, but may also penetrate the perception of the artwork itself.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hannah Kaube
- Department of Psychology, Neurocognitive Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
| | - Rasha Abdel Rahman
- Department of Psychology, Neurocognitive Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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Enge A, Süß F, Abdel Rahman R. Instant Effects of Semantic Information on Visual Perception. J Neurosci 2023; 43:4896-4906. [PMID: 37286353 PMCID: PMC10312055 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.2038-22.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/25/2022] [Revised: 03/16/2023] [Accepted: 04/17/2023] [Indexed: 06/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Does our perception of an object change once we discover what function it serves? We showed human participants (n = 48, 31 females and 17 males) pictures of unfamiliar objects either together with keywords matching their function, leading to semantically informed perception, or together with nonmatching keywords, resulting in uninformed perception. We measured event-related potentials to investigate at which stages in the visual processing hierarchy these two types of object perception differed from one another. We found that semantically informed compared with uninformed perception was associated with larger amplitudes in the N170 component (150-200 ms), reduced amplitudes in the N400 component (400-700 ms), and a late decrease in alpha/beta band power. When the same objects were presented once more without any information, the N400 and event-related power effects persisted, and we also observed enlarged amplitudes in the P1 component (100-150 ms) in response to objects for which semantically informed perception had taken place. Consistent with previous work, this suggests that obtaining semantic information about previously unfamiliar objects alters aspects of their lower-level visual perception (P1 component), higher-level visual perception (N170 component), and semantic processing (N400 component, event-related power). Our study is the first to show that such effects occur instantly after semantic information has been provided for the first time, without requiring extensive learning.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT There has been a long-standing debate about whether or not higher-level cognitive capacities, such as semantic knowledge, can influence lower-level perceptual processing in a top-down fashion. Here we could show, for the first time, that information about the function of previously unfamiliar objects immediately influences cortical processing within less than 200 ms. Of note, this influence does not require training or experience with the objects and related semantic information. Therefore, our study is the first to show effects of cognition on perception while ruling out the possibility that prior knowledge merely acts by preactivating or altering stored visual representations. Instead, this knowledge seems to alter perception online, thus providing a compelling case against the impenetrability of perception by cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Enge
- Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 12489 Berlin, Germany
- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive, Research Group Learning in Early Childhood and Brain Sciences, 04103, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Franziska Süß
- Fachhochschule des Mittelstands, 96050, Bamberg, Germany
| | - Rasha Abdel Rahman
- Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 12489 Berlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence "Science of Intelligence," 10587, Berlin, Germany
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Maier M, Blume F, Bideau P, Hellwich O, Abdel Rahman R. Knowledge-augmented face perception: Prospects for the Bayesian brain-framework to align AI and human vision. Conscious Cogn 2022; 101:103301. [DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2022.103301] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/20/2021] [Revised: 11/27/2021] [Accepted: 01/04/2022] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
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Linguistic labels cue biological motion perception and misperception. Sci Rep 2021; 11:17239. [PMID: 34446746 PMCID: PMC8390742 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-96649-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/26/2021] [Accepted: 08/05/2021] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Linguistic labels exert a particularly strong top-down influence on perception. The potency of this influence has been ascribed to their ability to evoke category-diagnostic features of concepts. In doing this, they facilitate the formation of a perceptual template concordant with those features, effectively biasing perceptual activation towards the labelled category. In this study, we employ a cueing paradigm with moving, point-light stimuli across three experiments, in order to examine how the number of biological motion features (form and kinematics) encoded in lexical cues modulates the efficacy of lexical top-down influence on perception. We find that the magnitude of lexical influence on biological motion perception rises as a function of the number of biological motion-relevant features carried by both cue and target. When lexical cues encode multiple biological motion features, this influence is robust enough to mislead participants into reporting erroneous percepts, even when a masking level yielding high performance is used.
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Baus C, Ruiz-Tada E, Escera C, Costa A. Early detection of language categories in face perception. Sci Rep 2021; 11:9715. [PMID: 33958663 PMCID: PMC8102523 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-89007-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/07/2020] [Accepted: 04/09/2021] [Indexed: 02/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Does language categorization influence face identification? The present study addressed this question by means of two experiments. First, to establish language categorization of faces, the memory confusion paradigm was used to create two language categories of faces, Spanish and English. Subsequently, participants underwent an oddball paradigm, in which faces that had been previously paired with one of the two languages (Spanish or English), were presented. We measured EEG perceptual differences (vMMN) between standard and two types of deviant faces: within-language category (faces sharing language with standards) or between-language category (faces paired with the other language). Participants were more likely to confuse faces within the language category than between categories, an index that faces were categorized by language. At the neural level, early vMMN were obtained for between-language category faces, but not for within-language category faces. At a later stage, however, larger vMMNs were obtained for those faces from the same language category. Our results showed that language is a relevant social cue that individuals used to categorize others and this categorization subsequently affects face perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cristina Baus
- Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology, University of Barcelona, 08035, Barcelona, Spain.
- Center for Brain and Cognition, CBC, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain.
| | | | - Carles Escera
- Brainlab-Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group, Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
- Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
- Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu, Esplugues de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Albert Costa
- Center for Brain and Cognition, CBC, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain
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Bourgin J, Silvert L, Borg C, Morand A, Sauvée M, Moreaud O, Hot P. Impact of emotionally negative information on attentional processes in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease. Brain Cogn 2020; 145:105624. [PMID: 32932107 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2020.105624] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/17/2020] [Revised: 08/26/2020] [Accepted: 09/01/2020] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
Abstract
Impairments of emotional processing have been reported in Alzheimer's disease (AD), consistently with the existence of early amygdala atrophy in the pathology. In this study, we hypothesized that patients with AD might show a deficit of orientation toward emotional information under conditions of visual search. Eighteen patients with AD, 24 age-matched controls, and 35 young controls were eye-tracked while they performed a visual search task on a computer screen. The target was a vehicle with implicit (negative or neutral) emotional content, presented concurrently with one, three, or five non-vehicle neutral distractors. The task was to find the target and to report whether a break in the target frame was on the left or on the right side. Both control groups detected negative targets more efficiently than they detected neutral targets, showing facilitated engagement toward negative information. In contrast, patients with AD showed no influence of emotional information on engagement delays. However, all groups reported the frame break location more slowly for negative than for neutral targets (after accounting for the last fixation delay), showing a more difficult disengagement from negative information. These findings are the first to highlight a selective lack of emotional influence on engagement processes in patients with AD. The involvement of amygdala alterations in this behavioral impairment remains to be investigated.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jessica Bourgin
- Université Grenoble Alpes, Université Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS UMR 5105, Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition (LPNC), 38000 Grenoble, France
| | - Laetitia Silvert
- Université Clermont Auvergne, UCA-CNRS UMR 6024, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale et Cognitive (LAPSCO), 63100 Clermont-Ferrand, France
| | - Céline Borg
- Département de Neurologie, CHU Saint-Etienne, 42270 Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, France
| | - Alexandrine Morand
- Normandie Université, UNICAEN, PSL Université Paris, EPHE, Inserm, U1077, CHU de Caen, Neuropsychologie et Imagerie de la Mémoire Humaine, GIP Cyceron, 14000 Caen, France
| | - Mathilde Sauvée
- Université Grenoble Alpes, Université Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS UMR 5105, Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition (LPNC), 38000 Grenoble, France; Centre Mémoire de Ressources et de Recherche, Pôle de Psychiatrie et Neurologie, CHU Grenoble, 38000 Grenoble, France
| | - Olivier Moreaud
- Université Grenoble Alpes, Université Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS UMR 5105, Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition (LPNC), 38000 Grenoble, France; Centre Mémoire de Ressources et de Recherche, Pôle de Psychiatrie et Neurologie, CHU Grenoble, 38000 Grenoble, France
| | - Pascal Hot
- Université Grenoble Alpes, Université Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS UMR 5105, Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition (LPNC), 38000 Grenoble, France; Institut Universitaire de France, France.
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