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A philosopher explores perception and cognition 

A plain, blank canvas does not look very beautiful; to make it aesthetically appealing requires adding structure and complexity. But how much structure is best? In other words, what is the relationship between beauty and complexity? It has long been hypothesized that complexity and beauty meet at a “sweet spot,” such that the most beautiful images are neither too simple nor too complex. Here, we take a novel experimental approach to this question, using an information-theoretic approach to object representation based on an internal “skeletal” structure. We algorithmically generated a library of two-dimensional polygons and manipulated their complexity by gradually smoothing out their features—essentially decreasing the amount of information in the objects. We then stylized these shapes as “paintings” by rendering them with artistic strokes, and “mounted” them on framed canvases hung in a virtual room. Participants were shown pairs of these mounted shapes (which possessed similar structures but varied in skeletal complexity) and chose which shape looked best by previewing each painting on the canvas. Experiment 1 revealed a “Goldilocks” effect: participants preferred paintings that were neither too simple nor too complex, such that moderately complex shapes were chosen as the most attractive paintings. Experiment 2 isolated the role of complexity per se: when the same shapes were scrambled (such that their structural complexity was undermined, while other visual features were preserved), the Goldilocks effect was dramatically diminished. These findings suggest a quadratic relationship between aesthetics and complexity in ways that go beyond previous measures of each and demonstrate the utility of information-theoretic approaches for exploring high-level aspects of visual experience.

 

Abstract Impossible figures represent the world in ways it cannot be. From the work of M. C. Escher to any popular perception textbook, such experiences show how some principles of mental processing can be so entrenched and inflexible as to produce absurd and even incoherent outcomes that could not occur in reality. Surprisingly, however, such impossible experiences are mostly limited to visual perception; are there “impossible figures” for other sensory modalities? Here, we import a known magic trick into the laboratory to report and investigate an impossible somatosensory experience—one that can be physically felt. We show that, even under full-cue conditions with objects that can be freely inspected, subjects can be made to experience a single object alone as feeling heavier than a group of objects that includes the single object as a member—an impossible and phenomenologically striking experience of weight. Moreover, we suggest that this phenomenon—a special case of the size-weight illusion—reflects a kind of “anti-Bayesian” perceptual updating that amplifies a challenge to rational models of perception and cognition. Impossibility can not only be seen, but also felt—and in ways that matter for accounts of (ir)rational mental processing. 

In addition to seeing objects that are directly in view, we also represent objects that are merely implied (e.g., by occlusion, motion, and other cues). What can imply the presence of an object? Here, we explored (in three preregistered experiments; N = 360 adults) the role of physical interaction in creating impressions of objects that are not actually present. After seeing an actor collide with an invisible wall or step onto an invisible box, participants gave facilitated responses to actual, visible surfaces that appeared where the implied wall or box had been—a Stroop-like pattern of facilitation and interference that suggested automatic inferences about the relevant implied surfaces. Follow-up experiments ruled out confounding geometric cues and anticipatory responses. We suggest that physical interactions can trigger representations of the participating surfaces such that we automatically infer the presence of objects implied only by their physical consequences. 

When a log burns, it transforms from a block of wood into a pile of ash. Such state changes are among the most dramatic ways objects change, going beyond mere changes of position or orientation. How does the mind represent changes of state? A foundational result in visual cognition is that memory extrapolates the positions of moving objects—a distortion called representational momentum. Here, five experiments ( N = 400 adults) exploited this phenomenon to investigate mental representations in state space. Participants who viewed objects undergoing state changes (e.g., ice melting, logs burning, or grapes shriveling) remembered them as more changed (e.g., more melted, burned, or shriveled) than they actually were. This pattern extended to several types of state changes, went beyond their low-level properties, and even adhered to their natural trajectories in state space. Thus, mental representations of objects actively incorporate how they change—not only in their relation to their environment, but also in their essential qualities.