Details of Research Outputs

The appreciation of art is not solely influenced by the inherent qualities of a work, such as image complexity, but also by external factors related to the observer, such as their visual working memory capacity, which allows for the real-time storage and manipulation of visual information. In this study, we sought to examine the predictive role of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors in aesthetic appreciation of landscape ink paintings. To assess the visual working memory capacity, we utilized the Visual-Object Working Memory task which required participants to sequentially encode, maintain, and determine whether the current visual pattern matched the one presented two trials ago. Following this, participants were presented with pairs of twenty landscape ink paintings and asked to indicate either their preference or perceived complexity for one painting over the other. Additionally, participants rated their aesthetic preference and perceived level of complexity for each painting on 6-point Likert scales. While our sample did not exhibit a bias toward complexity in their evaluation of paintings, we did discover that individuals with a greater visual working memory capacity tend to favor ink paintings with higher image entropy. These results align with the Processing Fluency Theory, suggesting that individuals typically have a more positive reaction to stimuli that are readily and smoothly processed. This research may have implications for the customization of art recommendation algorithms that take into account individual cognitive traits.