Abstract
We investigated whether strategies acquired in response to conflict frequency affect aesthetic evaluation of task-irrelevant stimuli, by employing a flanker task in which participants identified a target letter (“N” or “Z”) among flanker letters presented to the left or right side of the visual field. The target was flanked by two congruent (e.g., “NNNNN”) or incongruent (e.g., “ZZNZZ”) flankers on either side of the target; conflict frequency was manipulated in each visual field. The probability of trial congruency was higher in the low-conflict visual field; trial incongruency probability was higher in the high-conflict visual field. Aesthetic evaluation trials were inserted in parallel during every 16th flanker task trial, during which a pair of attractiveness-matched faces appeared side-by-side; participants decided which side of each face was more attractive (or unattractive, depending on the instruction). The flanker effect, in which reaction times for incongruent trials were longer than they were for congruent trials, was modulated by conflict frequency in each visual field. Specifically, the flanker effect in the low conflict visual field was greater than in the high conflict visual field. Furthermore, participants indicated that faces presented in the low conflict visual field were more attractive than were those presented in the high conflict visual field relative to their counterpart. A similar pattern of results was obtained during an aesthetic judgment task of meaningless patterns: block-wise conflict adaptation affected apparently task-irrelevant aesthetic judgments, as well as extent of cognitive control of conflicting responses, such that the aesthetic value of stimuli presented at spatial locations containing high response conflicts was reduced.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015