Responding Patterns of Naive Children and Adults to Artistic Styles in Paintings
Arnold, Mary Alice
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/69113
Description
Title
Responding Patterns of Naive Children and Adults to Artistic Styles in Paintings
Author(s)
Arnold, Mary Alice
Issue Date
1987
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Educat.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Art
Abstract
The ability to identify and categorize artistic style was investigated in this thesis. More specifically, the ability of naive children and adults to use the visual information available in the works of five Impressionist painters and to identify painting style was explored.
Subjects, ages 7, 13 and 19, in two conditions of information, were asked to scan four exemplar paintings and identify a fifth painting by the same artist. Eight works were presented and two levels of information about the works were given. Half of the subjects received no information about the formal dimensions of the painting styles, and half received verbal information about the three salient features of the artists' mature styles.
The four exemplar paintings, in the standard array, were presented such that all arrays displayed a landscape, a portrait, a still life and a figurative group by the same artist. The test arrays, four test paintings, displayed all landscapes, all portraits, all still lifes, or all figurative groups, by four different artists. Thus, subject matter was not a cue in the style identification process. The problem was to scan all of the paintings in the standard array, scan all of the paintings in the test array, and choose the test painting that was painted by the artist of the standard array.
The major finding was seen in the scores of the 7-year-olds with information. The particular kind and amount of information given depressed the scores of the 7-year-olds but had very little effect on the scores of the 13- and 19-year-olds.
Several categorical analyses were performed to explore the cross-classified variables of artist and category of painting. The general finding from the two-way factorial analysis of variance, using age and condition, was reconfirmed in the more specific and elaborate categorical analysis. A reduction in performance at age 7, with information, was seen across artists and categories of paintings.
The results were viewed in terms of the perceptual search strategy preferences of younger and older subjects. Seven-year-olds seem to prefer a global or holistic process for the abstraction of information and the recognition of artistic style, while older subjects seem more able to use a dimensional selecting process and are more able to isolate specific features that run through several examples of an artistic style.
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