LONDON (Dispatches) -- Adults and babies alike prefer the vibrant colors of van Gogh’s paintings, a new study in the Journal of Vision found.
Infants between 18 and 40 weeks old and adults between 18 and 43 years old were given iPads with a selection of 10 van Gogh landscapes among 40 images. The paintings were presented in pairs with 45 possible combinations for each participant.
Though certain biases already begin in infancy, life experiences impact individual preferences as we age.
Infants were shown the painting pairs for five seconds at a time. Those who looked at one image longer than another were determined to have a visual preference for that image. Adults received the same test and visual pairings, but were asked to select the image they found most pleasant. The team then compiled the data from 25 adults to score each artwork on its average pleasantness. This data was compared with the average looking time of 25 infants.
They found that the infants generally looked longer at the artworks that the adult participants had rated more highly for pleasantness, with van Gogh’s Green Corn Stalks achieving the highest shared preference.
The research suggests that infants look longer at colors that adults also preferred and showed an affinity for Picasso over Monet. A previous study, however, found no relationship between the length of time infants looked at paintings and adults’ preferences. This early research showed fewer paintings than the most recent study, but included a wider range of artists.
The team then tried to pinpoint what aspects of van Gogh’s paintings most interested both infants and adults. They determined that babies looked longer at paintings with more variation in brightness and colors, and adults tended to rank those same paintings more highly.
High-contrast paintings are very likely easier for infants to see, as their vision is still developing.
Researchers also found differences between the two groups. Infants tended toward paintings with stretches of sky, for example, while adults preferred the unexpected. Additionally, infants looked longer at images with more curves and edges, while their adult counterparts didn’t give them higher ratings.
Brain studies would be needed to determine more accurately whether infants derived more pleasure from the paintings they gazed at for longer periods, though the results suggest a link between infantile sensory bias and adults’ aesthetic judgment.
Adults may also have experiential associations that contribute to their choices.
“Those ‘top-down’ factors can affect the aesthetic experience, whereas for babies, with less experience in the world … they’re responding more in a ‘bottom-up’ manner to these visual features,” Philip McAdams, first author of the study from the University of Sussex, said.