Effectiveness of labels in digital art experience: psychophysiological and behavioral evidence.

Introduction: Nowadays museums make large use of digital materials (e.g., virtual tours) to attract visitors. Therefore, it is worthwhile investigating which variables affect the engagement with art outside the museum, and whether digital reproductions of artworks are as effective as museum originals in producing a satisfying aesthetic experience. Methods: Here we tested the effectiveness of introducing additional informative materials on the artistic enjoyment of contemporary paintings presented on a computer screen. Naïve observers were exposed to essential and descriptive labels before viewing artworks. We flanked traditional measurement methods - viewing times and questionnaires, with biometric parameters - pupil responses, eye movements, heart rate, and electrodermal activity. The results were then compared to our previous museum study that adopted the same experimental paradigm. Results: Our behavioral and psychophysiological data lead to a complex pattern of results. As found in the museum setting, providing detailed descriptions decreases complexity, evokes more positive sensations, and induces pupil dilation but does not enhance aesthetic appreciation. These results suggested that informative labels improve understanding and emotions but have a limited impact on the hedonic evaluation of artworks in both contexts. However, other results do not mirror those found in the museum; in the laboratory setting, participants spend a similar amount of time, have a comparable gaze behavior, and their electrodermal activity and heart rate do not change when viewing artworks with different types of labels. The main difference between the lab and museum settings is the shorter time spent viewing digital reproductions vs. real paintings, although subjective ratings (e.g., liking, interest) are comparable. Discussion: Overall, this study indicates that the environmental context does impact the aesthetic experience; although, some beneficial effects of introducing additional relevant content in labels accompanying artworks can also be acquainted through digital media outside of the museum.

Time estimation during motor activity.

Several studies on time estimation showed that the estimation of temporal intervals is related to the amount of attention devoted to time. This is explained by the scalar timing theory, which assumes that attention alters the number of pulses transferred by our internal clock to an accumulator that keeps track of the elapsed time. In a previous study, it was found that time underestimation during cognitive-demanding tasks was more pronounced while walking than while sitting, whereas no clear motor-induced effects emerged without a concurrent cognitive task. What remains unclear then is the motor interference itself on time estimation. Here we aim to clarify how the estimation of time can be influenced by demanding motor mechanisms and how different motor activities interact with concurrent cognitive tasks during time estimation. To this purpose, we manipulated simultaneously the difficulty of the cognitive task (solving arithmetic operations) and the motor task. We used an automated body movement that should require no motor or mental effort, a more difficult movement that requires some motor control, and a highly demanding movement requiring motor coordination and attention. We compared the effects of these three types of walking on time estimation accuracy and uncertainty, arithmetic performance, and reaction times. Our findings confirm that time estimation is affected by the difficulty of the cognitive task whereas we did not find any evidence that time estimation changes with the complexity of our motor task, nor an interaction between walking and the concurrent cognitive tasks. We can conclude that walking, although highly demanding, does not have the same effects as other mental tasks on time estimation.

Psychophysiological and behavioral responses to descriptive labels in modern art museums.

Educational tools in art exhibitions seem crucial to improve the cultural and aesthetic experience, particularly of non-expert visitors, thus becoming a strategic goal for museums. However, there has not been much research regarding the impact of labels on the quality of visitors' aesthetic experience. Therefore, here we compared the impact on the cognitive and emotional experience of naïve visitors between essential and descriptive labels, through multiple objective and subjective measurements, focusing on the controversial modern art museum context. We found that, after detailed descriptions, observers spend more time inspecting artworks, their eyes wander more looking for the described elements, their skin conductance and pupil size increase, and overall, they find the content less complex and more arousing. Our findings show that people do receive important benefits from reading detailed information about artworks. This suggests that elaborating effective labels should be a primary goal for museums interested in attracting a non-expert public.

Fast discrimination of fragmentary images: the role of local optimal information.

In naturalistic conditions, objects in the scene may be partly occluded and the visual system has to recognize the whole image based on the little information contained in some visible fragments. Previous studies demonstrated that humans can successfully recognize severely occluded images, but the underlying mechanisms occurring in the early stages of visual processing are still poorly understood. The main objective of this work is to investigate the contribution of local information contained in a few visible fragments to image discrimination in fast vision. It has been already shown that a specific set of features, predicted by a constrained maximum-entropy model to be optimal carriers of information (optimal features), are used to build simplified early visual representations (primal sketch) that are sufficient for fast image discrimination. These features are also considered salient by the visual system and can guide visual attention when presented isolated in artificial stimuli. Here, we explore whether these local features also play a significant role in more natural settings, where all existing features are kept, but the overall available information is drastically reduced. Indeed, the task requires discrimination of naturalistic images based on a very brief presentation (25 ms) of a few small visible image fragments. In the main experiment, we reduced the possibility to perform the task based on global-luminance positional cues by presenting randomly inverted-contrast images, and we measured how much observers' performance relies on the local features contained in the fragments or on global information. The size and the number of fragments were determined in two preliminary experiments. Results show that observers are very skilled in fast image discrimination, even when a drastic occlusion is applied. When observers cannot rely on the position of global-luminance information, the probability of correct discrimination increases when the visible fragments contain a high number of optimal features. These results suggest that such optimal local information contributes to the successful reconstruction of naturalistic images even in challenging conditions.

Influence of Motor and Cognitive Tasks on Time Estimation.

The passing of time can be precisely measured by using clocks, whereas humans' estimation of temporal durations is influenced by many physical, cognitive and contextual factors, which distort our internal clock. Although it has been shown that temporal estimation accuracy is impaired by non-temporal tasks performed at the same time, no studies have investigated how concurrent cognitive and motor tasks interfere with time estimation. Moreover, most experiments only tested time intervals of a few seconds. In the present study, participants were asked to perform cognitive tasks of different difficulties (look, read, solve simple and hard mathematical operations) and estimate durations of up to two minutes, while walking or sitting. The results show that if observers pay attention only to time without performing any other mental task, they tend to overestimate the durations. Meanwhile, the more difficult the concurrent task, the more they tend to underestimate the time. These distortions are even more pronounced when observers are walking. Estimation biases and uncertainties change differently with durations depending on the task, consistent with a fixed relative uncertainty. Our findings show that cognitive and motor systems interact non-linearly and interfere with time perception processes, suggesting that they all compete for the same resources.