An event-related potential study of semantic style-match judgments of artistic furniture

Abstract

This study investigates how semantic networks represent different artistic furniture. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants made style-match judgments for table and chair sets. All of the tables were in the Normal style, whereas the chairs were in the Normal, Minimal, ReadyMade, or Deconstruction styles. The Normal and Minimal chairs had the same rates of “match” responses, which were both higher than the rates for the ReadyMade and Deconstruction chairs. Compared with Normal chairs, the ERPs elicited by both ReadyMade chairs and Deconstruction chairs exhibited reliable N400 effects, which suggests that these two design styles were unlike the Normal design style. However, Minimal chairs evoked ERPs that were similar to the ERPs of Normal chairs. Furthermore, the N400 effects elicited by ReadyMade and Deconstruction chairs showed different scalp distributions. These findings reveal that semantic networks represent different design styles for items of the same category.

Introduction

Rapid developments in art and design have created an almost limitless number of items in the same category (for example, chairs in the category of furniture) that have a variety of features and different design styles. Scenes of a discordant furniture arrangement in a space are commonplace, for example, a modern floor lamp next to a classic sofa. In design studies, the most popular method of measuring participants' reactions to objects or images is to apply adjectival descriptions of the semantic differences (SD) and to employ a multidimensional scale (MDS). For example, such methods were used in numerous Kansei engineering research projects in Japan (Nagamachi, 1995) and in multidimensional space research (Green and Smith, 1989, Hsiao and Chen, 1997). The studies use questionnaires with a Likert scale, mostly based on the semantics analysis developed by Osgood in 1957, to acquire the participant's subjective responses to stimuli. Different bipolar adjectives (e.g., simple–complicated, plain–luxurious) are tested according to the stimuli and context, in the semantic differential measurement. Although fruitful results have been achieved (Lin and Fang, 2007, Lin et al., 2011), criticism regarding this method of measurement has arisen for several reasons: 1) a concern that the participants' response may be misguided due to the questionnaire design, 2) insufficient reliability and accuracy, and 3) a concern that participants will not answer all of the questions with sufficient care. As the process of acquiring the raw data is not well controlled, the subsequent data analysis may be invalid. Recently, Hung and Chen (2010) found that the SD method could not be used to measure contradictory semantics in the same product, such as “retro car”, which displays nostalgia by borrowing characteristics from classical cars but at the same time exhibits modern characteristics. These findings revealed that some traditional methods may not be suitable for artistic design research.

Through recent developments in science and technology, objective psychological responses can be measured using event-related potentials (ERPs). The temporal resolution of ERPs is on the same order of magnitude as the temporal resolution of cognitive processes proposed on the basis of purely behavioral experiments (response time, match percentages, etc.). Hence, the ERP could be used as a new tool for design assessment. In the context of incongruent furniture combinations, the N400 waveform component of the ERP is a widely distributed, negative-going potential peaking at approximately 400 ms after the onset of any meaningful stimuli. This N400 waveform represents the semantic relationship between the current stimulus and the preceding context. Several studies of the N400 waveform were undertaken to index semantic integration processes, using the final word of a sentence as the stimulus (Andrews et al., 1993, Kutas and Hillyard, 1980, McCarley et al., 1991, Mitchell et al., 1991), picture–words (Greenham et al., 2003, Mathalon et al., 2002), pairs of words (Grillon et al., 1991, Koyama et al., 1994, Khateb et al., 2007, Núñez-Peña and Honrubia-Serrano, 2005, Pritchard et al., 1991, Weisbrod et al., 1998), pairs of pictures (Barrett and Rugg, 1990, Bobes et al., 1996, Ellis and Nelson, 1999, Guerra et al., 2009, Proverbio et al., 2007), and even incongruent human actions (Proverbio and Riva, 2009, Wu and Coulson, 2007) when the presented objects did not fit into any previously established semantic category.

For many years, researchers have examined how classifying objects into categories evokes the N400 effect. In a number of ERP studies using categorization tasks, larger N400 effects were evoked during between-category comparisons (e.g., books vs. dogs) than during within-category comparisons (e.g., sheepdogs vs. golden retrievers) (Bobes et al., 1996, Mathalon et al., 2010, Guerra et al., 2009, Hamm et al., 2002, Proverbio et al., 2007). In natural within-category identification tasks, several studies of lexical categorization have demonstrated that the non-prototypical categories (e.g., shar-peis) elicited greater negative N400 effects than did the prototypical categories (e.g., golden retrievers) (Pritchard et al., 1991, Stuss et al., 1988). Most of these experiments dealt with natural categories (e.g., plants, animals, fruits) rather than artificial categories (e.g., tools, furniture, bicycles) (Paz-Caballero et al., 2006, Proverbio et al., 2007). It is possible that the artificial objects may be much more difficult to identify than natural objects because natural stimuli usually share similar or common elements and are more perceptual (e.g., heads, eyes and legs) and semantic (e.g., move, eat, breathe, and make noise) (Proverbio et al., 2007). In addition, as new objects are produced every day, not only are the representative objects changeable but the distinctions between object categories for design or art pieces are also often blurred; thus, occasionally, it is too difficult to classify objects due to tremendous variations in style. Hence, artificial categorical and semantic processing using ERP is a worthy topic for further investigation in design research.

In the design field, artificial objects are judged based on their functions and beautiful appearance. However, designers apply their creativity to produce new designs and react to social issues; thus, the definitions of design streams and design styles differ for different generations. For example, in addition to Modernism, Fischer (1989) divided the style of mainstream products in the 1980s into six design categories. Two of them, Minimalism and Archetype, have currently taken over the position of modernism, and new design challenges, such as ReadyMade, Deconstruction and New Art Deco, have gradually become fashionable. For this study, we chose four types of design: Archetype, Minimal, ReadyMade, and Deconstruction as the testing design styles because of their popularity, potential for development, and diversity. According to Fischer (1989), the Archetype design style aims to define the basic “primary” form of an object, as opposed to producing individual arbitrary interpretations and encouraging a rapid change in fashion. Normal, vulgar and anonymous objects are references for this style and are intelligently transformed into new designs (Lin and Cheng, 2004). Lin (2003) appears to be closely related to shapes found in traditional rural cultures but have been “upgraded” by the use of high-quality materials and distorted proportions. Minimal designs are characterized by a reduction in expressive media, a rediscovery of the value of empty space, extreme simplicity, and formal cleanliness (Bhaskaran, 2005). Many well-designed contemporary products tend to have simple shapes, such as the Apple iPhone and iPad. This style is based on the ultimate, most reduced structure to achieve a “pure” and minimized form (Rashid, 2004). Works in the Deconstruction style, much like art pieces, usually make use of broken and jagged forms, warped and overlapped planes, and, at times, disturbing shapes, in sharp contrast to logic and order (Bhaskaran, 2005). The Deconstruction style was derived from literary criticism that aimed to extract the meaninglessness of the text by destabilizing its rationality and logicality (Culler, 2008). The Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, is a typical example of Deconstruction in architecture: with the distorted shape of the building, Gehry challenges the ideal of rational order and offers us another alternative. In ReadyMade works, the combination of unrelated found objects in a new context is close to a kind of art that leads viewers to be puzzled by the familiar yet unfamiliar appearance. In Fig. 1, the guitar chair appears to be bizarre as a whole, despite the fact that the box and the guitar are common objects individually. ReadyMade style was most often associated with Dadaism (Richter, 1997, Short, 1994); Marcel Duchamp who was a highly influential Dadaist subverted conventional art based on everyday found objects such as dubbing a “urinal art” and naming it “Fountain” (Scanlan, 2003). Additionally, this style also deals with environmental issues such as green design. Based on their respective ideals, these four styles exhibit their own unique visual features.

Our interest lies in the style and artistry of artificial objects, which should be easier to identify than natural objects in the within-category (e.g., sheepdogs vs. golden retrievers). Thus, the comparison of style within the within-category in this study should be similar to “prototypical categories” and “non-prototypical categories”. Several art criticism studies on ReadyMade works included interpreted meanings that were ambiguous (Goldsmith, 1983, Molesworth, 1998), disordered (Goldsmith, 1983, Scanlan, 2003), contradictory (Smuts, 1997) and puzzling (Moffitt, 2001). Moreover, Deconstruction works are exemplified by free-form structures (Iyengar et al., 2006, Schober et al., 2010), organic shapes (Giovannini, 2004), and even montages of fragmented forms (Hartoonian, 2002). Gerlach et al. (2004) reported that such distorted structures for the identification of objects may activate areas in the posterior region of the brain; this phenomenon most likely reflects the use of the structural description system in models of object recognition. We expected that artificial objects with a bizarre style (e.g., Deconstruction and ReadyMade) would evoke larger N400 amplitudes than those of a more conventional style (e.g., Normal). Additionally, we were interested to find out whether Minimal and Normal styles could be distinguished by manipulating their combinations. If the N400 effect could serve as indicator of the degree of perceived similarity on within-category identification tasks of artificial objects, we believe that the ERP could become a new tool to help designers better understand design recognition. This study could also provide new information for physiologists about the N400 response not only in the context of “pure” semantics but also in the perception of artificial designs. Hence, the results of this study could be a good starting point for further research in other fields.