TY - JOUR

T1 - Investigating the Role of Working Memory Resources across Aesthetic and Non-Aesthetic Judgments

AU - Bara, Ionela

AU - Binney, Richard

AU - Ramsey, Richard

PY - 2023/5

Y1 - 2023/5

N2 - Aesthetic judgments dominate much of daily life by guiding how we evaluate objects, people, and experiences in our environment. One key question that remains unanswered is the extent to which more specialised or largely general cognitive resources support aesthetic judgments. To investigate this question in the context of working memory, we examined the extent to which a working memory load produces similar or different response time interference on aesthetic compared to non-aesthetic judgments. Across three pre-registered experiments that used Bayesian multi-level modelling approaches (N>100 per experiment), we found clear evidence that a working memory load produces similar response time interference on aesthetic judgments relative to non-aesthetic (motion) judgments. We also showed that this similarity in processing across aesthetic versus non-aesthetic judgments holds across variations in the form of art (people vs landscape; Exps. 1-3), medium type (artwork vs photographs; Exp. 2) and load content (art images vs letters; Exps. 1-3). These findings suggest that across a range of experimental contexts, as well as different processing streams in working memory (e.g., visual vs verbal), aesthetic and motion judgments commonly rely on a domain-general cognitive system, rather than a system that is more specifically tied to aesthetic judgments. In doing so, these findings shine new light on the working memory resources that supports aesthetic judgments, as well as how domain-general cognitive systems operate more generally in cognition.

AB - Aesthetic judgments dominate much of daily life by guiding how we evaluate objects, people, and experiences in our environment. One key question that remains unanswered is the extent to which more specialised or largely general cognitive resources support aesthetic judgments. To investigate this question in the context of working memory, we examined the extent to which a working memory load produces similar or different response time interference on aesthetic compared to non-aesthetic judgments. Across three pre-registered experiments that used Bayesian multi-level modelling approaches (N>100 per experiment), we found clear evidence that a working memory load produces similar response time interference on aesthetic judgments relative to non-aesthetic (motion) judgments. We also showed that this similarity in processing across aesthetic versus non-aesthetic judgments holds across variations in the form of art (people vs landscape; Exps. 1-3), medium type (artwork vs photographs; Exp. 2) and load content (art images vs letters; Exps. 1-3). These findings suggest that across a range of experimental contexts, as well as different processing streams in working memory (e.g., visual vs verbal), aesthetic and motion judgments commonly rely on a domain-general cognitive system, rather than a system that is more specifically tied to aesthetic judgments. In doing so, these findings shine new light on the working memory resources that supports aesthetic judgments, as well as how domain-general cognitive systems operate more generally in cognition.

KW - aesthetic judgment

KW - working memory

KW - dual-task paradigm

KW - working memory load

U2 - https://doi.org/10.1177%2F17470218221101876

DO - https://doi.org/10.1177%2F17470218221101876

M3 - Article

VL - 76

SP - 1026

EP - 1044

JO - Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

JF - Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

SN - 1747-0218

IS - 5

ER -