John Mullennix

Johnstown, PA

University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown

Professor of Psychology

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Does artistic experience affect the mental processes used when viewing visual art?

By John Mullennix

108%
funded

$1,200
goal

8
lab notes

Haven't backed any projects yet!

Published on May 31, 2017

Project submitted to a journal

Hi Folks,Just a quick note to let you know that I have submitted a paper based on this project to the scientific journal Perception. In addition to the experiment funded here, we conducted another...

Published on Nov 18, 2016

Final Results II

Apparently some people cannot access my attachment, so here is the full text.What follows is a brief report summarizing the results from this project. Background. The goal of this study was to ex...

Published on Nov 18, 2016

Final Results

In the attached file is a brief explanation of the results from this study. I am grateful beyond measure to everyone who contributed funds to this project, without your help it would have been dif...

Published on Nov 12, 2016

Data Collection Finished

This morning I ran the last subject for the project, so the data collection part of the study is finished! Within the next week or so I will be analyzing the data to see what we have. I will post...

Published on Oct 30, 2016

Data Collection Nearing End

Howdy Folks,Just a quick note to let people know that within the next 2 weeks I will finish data collection for this project. It's been an interesting time soliciting artists for this study. I sp...

Published on Jul 17, 2016

Data Collection Underway

Howdy Folks,Just a quick note. I've run my first subject for the study. Everything went smoothly. I'm currently scheduling other subjects, so data collection is underway. Nothing else special t...

Published on Jun 27, 2016

Experiment Programmed Up!

I have finished programming up the project. I've pilot tested the programs and everything is ready to go. I am scheduling my first subject so I can get rolling on data collection. Progress!

Published on Jun 19, 2016

Beginning the Study!

Now that my project is funded, I'm working on the programming to run the experiment on my laptop. I use the E-Prime package. It won't take long to program it up. Then, I will begin contacting su...

:-)

Nov 12, 2016

Does artistic experience affect the mental processes used when viewing visual art?

Yeah, that's a bit warped...

Nov 12, 2016

Does artistic experience affect the mental processes used when viewing visual art?

Yes, that's a critical issue... A lot of people don't view Duchamp's "Fountain" and Warhol's soup cans as art... Well, in this study we're using abstract modern art paintings from little known painters. The artworks were used in a previous study by some Europeans, and they find that the average person generally seems to treat them as "legitimate" art works. There are fMRI brain imaging studies that indicate that different brain regions "light up" for portraits vs. abstract art vs. landscapes, etc. So there seems to be some physiological evidence that we treat certain entities as "art." It's a Wild West area of research... Indeed, one idea I have is to take something like Fountain and manipulate the titles and information that comes with it and see if that affects how people treat it. There are also huge differences between naive viewers and experts, which is the entire reason for this study...

Jun 29, 2016

Does artistic experience affect the mental processes used when viewing visual art?

:-)

Jun 28, 2016

Does artistic experience affect the mental processes used when viewing visual art?

I absolutely believe that. I think the evolution of art bears that out also. You look at the ancient petroglyphs and cupules from 500 million years ago and there are reasons why art affects us in the way it does, it is ingrained in us for a reason.

Jun 19, 2016

Does artistic experience affect the mental processes used when viewing visual art?

Hi Carly, Thank you so much for your donation, I really appreciate it! Yes, pareidolia is a really interesting phenomenon. There hasn't been a lot of research on it, especially looking at differences between artists and other people, but my guess is that those differences are there, and that artists' brains are wired in a slightly different way that facilitates it. The studies I've been doing will get at some differences between artists' brains and others. Actually, as I think about it now, studying individual differences in pareidolia would be an interesting research study (wheels in head beginning to turn). Thanks!

Jun 02, 2016

Does artistic experience affect the mental processes used when viewing visual art?