The effects of development, sorting strategy, and visual structure on the classification of nonobjective paintings
This study examined the influence of cognitive development, sorting strategy, and visual structure on novices' classification of nonobjective paintings. Third-fourth graders, seventh graders, and college students completed free and exemplar sorting tasks involving colored slides of paintings, representing six distinct categories of visual structure within the nonobjective art style. The results added to the evidence that development was a potent factor underlying the students' ability to classify nonobjective art. The results also revealed that selected properties of visual structure were used more readily than others as classification cues by both children and adults. In addition, a strong interaction was found between the development and the type of sorting task used to classify the paintings, which pointed to a possible bias in assessing spontaneous children's classifications when the exemplar sorting strategy was chosen as research paradigm.
Education, Art, Fine Arts, Psychology, Experimental
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign