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The Effect of Verbal Contextual Information in Processing Visual Art
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among structural, semantic, and verbal memories of visual art. It was hypothesized that verbal contextual information, in the form of descriptive and interpretive titles, promotes varied levels of structural and semantic processing as a function of differences in abstraction, media, and prior knowledge. Findings were best explained by the sensory-semantic model of processing in predicting that the availability of contextual information at input facilitates the semantic analysis of structural information. Results indicated meanings were more accessible for processing when responding to photographs than to drawings, yet the accuracy of their interpretation was determined by the abstraction level that characterized each work of art and by the type of contextual information given during presentation. The findings further indicated that even students with prior knowledge of photography benefited from the availability of verbal contexts.
... Educators should provide learning opportunities that assist the learner to assimilate their prior knowledge to any new knowledge in order to promote schema acquisition that can assist with comprehension. Studies in art education have found that comprehension of art is reliant on both the nature of the visual stimulus and the viewer's cognitive structures or existing knowledge (Koroscik, 1982;Koroscik, Desmond & Brandon, 1985). According to the constructive theorist DiSibio (1982), comprehension is a cognitive process that requires the activation of an individual's prior knowledge. ...
... According to the constructive theorist DiSibio (1982), comprehension is a cognitive process that requires the activation of an individual's prior knowledge. Koroscik, Desmond and Brandon (1985), have suggested that comprehending art involves a complex interplay between encoding its formal qualities and its semantic characteristics. Raney (1999) suggests that critical understanding, that most experts possess, requires guided study and discussion and 'informed judgement'. ...
... Adequate content knowledge is central to teaching and understanding works of art which convey the social and political climate, historical tradition, religiousphilosophical beliefs, and artistic conventions of their makers. Indeed, works of visual art have been described as cognitively complex by both experts and scholars in the field (Goodman, 1984;Koroscik, 1985). If students are to appreciate and understand this complexity, teachers should function much like experts in bringing broad content knowledge and deep understanding to their teaching. ...
This essay begins at looking at three common factors previous researches have mentioned including capital market, medium and cultural capitals and then evaluates their limitations on affecting the popularity of films and theatre. Then the essay discusses the element of abstractness in films and theatres and identifies it as the main factor by analysing its effect on popularity in terms of psychology and contemporary education system. The writer also does a survey about the preferences and habits of watching films and theatres to provide data for analysing, which targets on 212 young people aged 14 to 25.
Four experiments, with a total of 576 undergraduates, evaluated a model of picture and word encoding. The primary assumptions of this model are that both sensory and semantic codes can be activated for both pictures and words but that the relative order of access to phonemic information is different for the 2 types of representation. For pictures, phonemic access is indirect, with label or name codes accessible only after semantic processing. For words, phonemic access is direct, with no need for prior semantic processing. These assumptions were evaluated in a task requiring either serial reconstruction or serial recall of the order of the 2 types of stimuli—tasks that require accessibility of a verbal label. In different experiments, type of representation, label similarity, schematic similarity, rate and conceptual similarity were manipulated. Results indicate that label similarity disrupted performance independently of all other variables, confirming along with verbal reports of the Ss, the apparent usefulness or necessity of labeling stimuli in remembering serial order. In accord with expections of the model, high levels of either schematic or conceptual similarity disrupted serial ordering of the pictures, either eliminating or reversing the typical pictorial superiority effect. High levels of conceptual similarity among the labels for the pictures had no reliable effects. The proposed sensory–semantic model is contrasted with the dual code hypothesis and with a levels-of-processing conceptualization. (22 ref) * (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This paper briefly reviews the evidence for multistore theories of memory and points out some difficulties with the approach. An alternative framework for human memory research is then outlined in terms of depth or levels of processing. Some current data and arguments are reexamined in the light of this alternative framework and implications for further research considered.
The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effect of verbalization on the processing and retention of visual art information. Thirty-six undergraduate volunteers viewed artworks of varying levels of abstraction while performing verbal or nonverbal processing tasks that directed their attention to a specified area of an artwork or to a work in its entirety. The nature and specificity of retention was determined with verbal and nonverbal questions that asked viewers to recognize the structure and the representational content of an artwork, and to recall precisely where the recognized information appeared within the work. Results indicated a verbal task instructing subjects to generate an appropriate title for an artwork while viewing it in its entirety promoted superior processing and retention over all other verbal and nonverbal tasks. This and other findings followed the predictions of a levels-of-processing model of encoding.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of prior knowledge, presentation time, and selected task demands on information processed by viewers of two-dimensional visual art that displayed varying abstraction levels. A "depth-of-processing" model predicted that such factors would influence the encoding and subsequent retrieval of pictorial information. Results of the study indicated, as predicted, that the amount and type of information subjects remembered about visual art were influenced by their prior knowledge of art history, the duration of stimulus presentation, the nature of task demands, and the level of abstraction in artwork displayed. The results additionally indicated several significant interactions among these main effects.
Ss named or categorized a picture preceded sometime earlier by itself or by its verbal label as well as a word preceded by itself or a pictorial counterpart. The extent to which the 2nd item benefited from prior processing was a function of the mode of the 2nd item, the mode of the previous occurrence of the concept, and the task. Results of the naming task of Exp I (36 undergraduates) suggest that words are more generic, in that they tended to facilitate processing of subsequent occurrences of the concept regardless of the mode of the 2nd occurrence, whereas pictures tended to facilitate only subsequent pictures. In fact, reading a word was not faster after having just named a pictorial representation of that concept. Exp II (48 undergraduates) explored, and ruled out, the possibility that this failure to find facilitation was the result of an inhibitory mechanism. In general, the data are consistent with the idea that pictures and words consult the same semantic system for their interpretation but that words activate a more generic set of semantic information than do pictures. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Four experiments examined the role of verbal information in recognition memory for complex, scenic photographs. At input, subjects performed a communication-oriented verbalization task or one of several varieties of a nonverbal task. Verbalization subjects out-performed others in a subsequent “resemblance” test which required recognition of both previously presented items and verbally similar “same-scene” or left/right-reversed items. However, verbalization did not improve discrimination between input pictures and their verbally similar mates in a “discrimination” test. Subjects were apparently able to control the weight given to verbal versus nonverbal information in meeting demands of the recognition tests. Experiment 4 suggested differences in the retrieval characteristics of verbal and nonverbal information, supporting one version of a dual-trace theory.
Adult subjects in two experiments were presented pairs of stimuli that differed in varying degree on an abstract semantic
attribute, and were required to choose the one with the higher value on the given dimension. Subjects in Experiment 1 chose
the more pleasant member of a pair of pictures, concrete nouns, or abstract nouns. Those in Experiment 2, presented a pair
of pictures or concrete nouns, chose the one whose referent had the higher monetary value. Theoretical interest centered on
the effects of semantic distance, stimulus mode, and individual differences in imagery and verbal ability on choice time.
In both experiments, response times (1) decreased with increases in semantic distance, (2) were faster for pictures than words
(and for concrete than abstract words in Experiment 1), and (3) were faster for high- than for lowimagery participants. The
results are completely consistent with a dual-coding (image vs. verbal) interpretation: Pleasantness and value, though conceptually
abstract, are attributes of things rather than words, and they are accordingly represented in and processed by a system specialized
for dealing with nonverbal information.
Thesis (Ph. D)--Ohio State University, 1983. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-208). Photocopy.
A number of independent lines of research have suggested that semantic and articulatory information become available differentially from pictures and words. Five experiments with 212 university students suggest a model of information access whereby pictures access semantic information more readily than name information, with the reverse being true for words. Memory for both pictures and words was a function of the amount of processing required to access a particular type of information as well as the extent of response differentiation necessitated by the task. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).