Appreciation for artwork affects how viewers remember it

(Image: Pixabay CC0) - How much someone likes a piece of artwork can impact their memory of when they first encountered it and which direction they were facing, finds new UCL-led research. The findings show that aesthetic experience is not limited to just the visual features of a piece of artwork, but also the moment in which it was viewed. The study, published in PNAS , asked 124 participants to look around a virtual reality art gallery, which featured 48 selected abstract artworks by internationally-recognised digital artists, including Sara Ludy and Yoshi Sodeoka. Participants navigated through the on-screen gallery using arrow keys on a computer keyboard, as in a computer game. This meant that they had to make a deliberate action to turn to look at each picture. After they visited the gallery researchers asked the participants to perform three tasks, focussing on recognition, spatial memory, and liking, respectively. First, participants viewed several artworks and reported on whether they had just seen them in the gallery or not.