Maria Nadal
Biographic Data
| ID | 118843 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maria Nadal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maria |
| FAMILY NAME | Nadal |
| SIGNATURE | NADAL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universitat de les Illes Balears |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9341-4688 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Judging beauty and liking
Information and affective valence influence judgments of complexity, liking and understanding
Visual complexity is a key factor in perceptual and evaluative judgments. People's representation of visual complexity is constructed from quantitative and structural image features, but it is also influenced by familiarity and expertise. We examined how people represent visual complexity and its impact on perception and evaluation, focusing on information about paintings and their affective valence on judgments of visual complexity, liking and u…
Defensive emotions and evaluative judgements
Aesthetic and moral evaluations engage appetitive and defensive emotions. While the role played by pleasure in positive aesthetic and moral judgements has been extensively researched, little is known about how defensive emotions influence negative aesthetic and moral judgements. Specifically, it is unknown which defensive emotions such judgements tap into, and whether both kinds of judgement share a common emotional root. Here, we investigated ho…
From sacred symbolism to luxury display and consumption
This work presents the first remains of a peacock (Pavo cristatus Linnaeus 1758) discovered in an archeological context in Catalonia. It is a well-preserved animal (14 remains of an adult female) located in medieval levels-datable to the 13th century (1210-1278 cal. AD) at the site of Carrer de Sotstinent Navarro, in the city of Barcelona. We present the study of the remains of this animal together with that of the other birds recovered from the …
Musical aesthetic sensitivity
Empirical aesthetics has mainly focused on general and simple relations between stimulus features and aesthetic appreciation. Consequently, to explain why people differ so much in what they like and prefer continues to be a challenge for the field. One possible reason is that people differ in their aesthetic sensitivity, that is, the extent to which they weigh certain stimulus features. Studies have shown that people vary substantially in their a…
The nature of perception and emotion in aesthetic appreciation
Alexis Makin argued in a recent paper that Empirical Aesthetics is unable to properly advance our understanding of the mechanisms involved in aesthetic experience. The reason for this predicament, he claims, is an inability of current research methods to capture the psychological properties that truly characterize aesthetic experience, especially the unique perceptual and emotional processes involved in the aesthetic experience. We show that Maki…
The role of working memory capacity in evaluative judgments of liking and beauty
Judgments of liking and beauty appear to be expressions of a common hedonic state, but they differ in how they engage cognitive processes. We hypothesised that beauty judgments place greater demands on limited executive resources than judgments of liking. We tested this hypothesis by asking two groups of participants to judge works of visual art for their beauty or liking while having to remember the location of 1, 3, or 5 dots in a 4 by 4 matrix…
A Farewell to Art
Empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics study two main issues: the valuation of sensory objects and art experience. These two issues are often treated as if they were intrinsically interrelated: Research on art experience focuses on how art elicits aesthetic pleasure, and research on valuation focuses on special categories of objects or emotional processes that determine the aesthetic experience. This entanglement hampers progress in empirical a…
A new conception of visual aesthetic sensitivity
Aesthetic sensitivity has been defined as the ability to recognize and appreciate beauty and compositional excellence, and to judge artistic merit according to standards of aesthetic value. The Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test (VAST) has often been used to assess this ability, but recent research has revealed it has several psychometric problems. Such problems are not easily remedied, because they reflect flawed assumptions inherent to the conce…
Neuroaesthetics
The field of neuroaesthetics has gained in popularity in recent years but also attracted criticism from the perspectives both of the humanities and the sciences. In an effort to consolidate research in the field, we characterize neuroaesthetics as the cognitive neuroscience of aesthetic experience, drawing on long traditions of research in empirical aesthetics on the one hand and cognitive neuroscience on the other. We clarify the aims and scope …
Neuroesthetics
Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments
About a decade ago, psychology of the arts started to gain momentum owing to a number of drives: technological progress improved the conditions under which art could be studied in the laboratory, neuroscience discovered the arts as an area of interest, and new theories offered a more comprehensive look at aesthetic experiences. Ten years ago, Leder, Belke, Oeberst, and Augustin (2004) proposed a descriptive information-processing model of the com…
Taxonomical uses of the species concept in the human lineage
Different species concepts, which broadened the scope of Mayr’s Biological Species Concept, have been put forward aiming to produce sound taxonomies of fossil taxa. Here, we propose using a simple one, the Evolutionary Species Concept, on the grounds of considering that separation of populations – disregarding other issues – is enough to describe the evolution of the human lineage. The question of the acceptable number of Middle Pleistocene homin…
Predicting beauty
Visual complexity has been known to be a significant predictor of preference for artistic works for some time. The first study reported here examines the extent to which perceived visual complexity in art can be successfully predicted using automated measures of complexity. Contrary to previous findings the most successful predictor of visual complexity was Gif compression. The second study examined the extent to which fractal dimension could acc…
Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments
About a decade ago, psychology of the arts started to gain momentum owing to a number of drives: technological progress improved the conditions under which art could be studied in the laboratory, neuroscience discovered the arts as an area of interest, and new theories offered a more comprehensive look at aesthetic experiences. Ten years ago, Leder, Belke, Oeberst, and Augustin (2004) proposed a descriptive information-processing model of the com…
Neuroaesthetics
The field of neuroaesthetics has gained in popularity in recent years but also attracted criticism from the perspectives both of the humanities and the sciences. In an effort to consolidate research in the field, we characterize neuroaesthetics as the cognitive neuroscience of aesthetic experience, drawing on long traditions of research in empirical aesthetics on the one hand and cognitive neuroscience on the other. We clarify the aims and scope …
Predicting beauty
Visual complexity has been known to be a significant predictor of preference for artistic works for some time. The first study reported here examines the extent to which perceived visual complexity in art can be successfully predicted using automated measures of complexity. Contrary to previous findings the most successful predictor of visual complexity was Gif compression. The second study examined the extent to which fractal dimension could acc…
A new conception of visual aesthetic sensitivity
Aesthetic sensitivity has been defined as the ability to recognize and appreciate beauty and compositional excellence, and to judge artistic merit according to standards of aesthetic value. The Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test (VAST) has often been used to assess this ability, but recent research has revealed it has several psychometric problems. Such problems are not easily remedied, because they reflect flawed assumptions inherent to the conce…
Predicting beauty
Visual complexity has been known to be a significant predictor of preference for artistic works for some time. The first study reported here examines the extent to which perceived visual complexity in art can be successfully predicted using automated measures of complexity. Contrary to previous findings the most successful predictor of visual complexity was Gif compression. The second study examined the extent to which fractal dimension could acc…
Taxonomical uses of the species concept in the human lineage
Different species concepts, which broadened the scope of Mayr’s Biological Species Concept, have been put forward aiming to produce sound taxonomies of fossil taxa. Here, we propose using a simple one, the Evolutionary Species Concept, on the grounds of considering that separation of populations – disregarding other issues – is enough to describe the evolution of the human lineage. The question of the acceptable number of Middle Pleistocene homin…
Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments
About a decade ago, psychology of the arts started to gain momentum owing to a number of drives: technological progress improved the conditions under which art could be studied in the laboratory, neuroscience discovered the arts as an area of interest, and new theories offered a more comprehensive look at aesthetic experiences. Ten years ago, Leder, Belke, Oeberst, and Augustin (2004) proposed a descriptive information-processing model of the com…
Neuroesthetics
Neuroaesthetics
The field of neuroaesthetics has gained in popularity in recent years but also attracted criticism from the perspectives both of the humanities and the sciences. In an effort to consolidate research in the field, we characterize neuroaesthetics as the cognitive neuroscience of aesthetic experience, drawing on long traditions of research in empirical aesthetics on the one hand and cognitive neuroscience on the other. We clarify the aims and scope …
A Farewell to Art
Empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics study two main issues: the valuation of sensory objects and art experience. These two issues are often treated as if they were intrinsically interrelated: Research on art experience focuses on how art elicits aesthetic pleasure, and research on valuation focuses on special categories of objects or emotional processes that determine the aesthetic experience. This entanglement hampers progress in empirical a…
A new conception of visual aesthetic sensitivity
Aesthetic sensitivity has been defined as the ability to recognize and appreciate beauty and compositional excellence, and to judge artistic merit according to standards of aesthetic value. The Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test (VAST) has often been used to assess this ability, but recent research has revealed it has several psychometric problems. Such problems are not easily remedied, because they reflect flawed assumptions inherent to the conce…
The nature of perception and emotion in aesthetic appreciation
Alexis Makin argued in a recent paper that Empirical Aesthetics is unable to properly advance our understanding of the mechanisms involved in aesthetic experience. The reason for this predicament, he claims, is an inability of current research methods to capture the psychological properties that truly characterize aesthetic experience, especially the unique perceptual and emotional processes involved in the aesthetic experience. We show that Maki…
The role of working memory capacity in evaluative judgments of liking and beauty
Judgments of liking and beauty appear to be expressions of a common hedonic state, but they differ in how they engage cognitive processes. We hypothesised that beauty judgments place greater demands on limited executive resources than judgments of liking. We tested this hypothesis by asking two groups of participants to judge works of visual art for their beauty or liking while having to remember the location of 1, 3, or 5 dots in a 4 by 4 matrix…
Musical aesthetic sensitivity
Empirical aesthetics has mainly focused on general and simple relations between stimulus features and aesthetic appreciation. Consequently, to explain why people differ so much in what they like and prefer continues to be a challenge for the field. One possible reason is that people differ in their aesthetic sensitivity, that is, the extent to which they weigh certain stimulus features. Studies have shown that people vary substantially in their a…
Defensive emotions and evaluative judgements
Aesthetic and moral evaluations engage appetitive and defensive emotions. While the role played by pleasure in positive aesthetic and moral judgements has been extensively researched, little is known about how defensive emotions influence negative aesthetic and moral judgements. Specifically, it is unknown which defensive emotions such judgements tap into, and whether both kinds of judgement share a common emotional root. Here, we investigated ho…
From sacred symbolism to luxury display and consumption
This work presents the first remains of a peacock (Pavo cristatus Linnaeus 1758) discovered in an archeological context in Catalonia. It is a well-preserved animal (14 remains of an adult female) located in medieval levels-datable to the 13th century (1210-1278 cal. AD) at the site of Carrer de Sotstinent Navarro, in the city of Barcelona. We present the study of the remains of this animal together with that of the other birds recovered from the …
Judging beauty and liking
Information and affective valence influence judgments of complexity, liking and understanding
Visual complexity is a key factor in perceptual and evaluative judgments. People's representation of visual complexity is constructed from quantitative and structural image features, but it is also influenced by familiarity and expertise. We examined how people represent visual complexity and its impact on perception and evaluation, focusing on information about paintings and their affective valence on judgments of visual complexity, liking and u…
Aesthetic Perception and Analysis (12 works) · Cognitive psychology (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Aesthetics (9 works) · Art (7 works) · Creativity in Education and Neuroscience (7 works) · Perception (7 works) · Beauty (6 works) · Color perception and design (6 works) · Cognitive science (4 works)