Perceptual Veridicality in Esthetic Communication: A Model, General Procedure, and Illustration

Abstract

The validity of much artistic criticism rests upon two crucial assumptions about the nature of esthetic communication. The first (Hypothesis H 1 ) holds that objective esthetic features are accurately perceived by audience members. The second (Hypothesis H 2 ) asserts that such perceptual veridicality does not depend upon one's degree of education or training, so that critics and audience members tend to share cognitive responses t o artistic messages and offerings. However, the empirical verification of H 1 and H 2 has received little attention. Indeed suitable models and methods for addressing these issues cppear to be missing. Accordingly. this article proposes a model of perceptual veridicality in esthetic communication. describes a procedure for assessing perceptual accuracy. and illustrates this approach in a study of perceptual responses to stylistic aspects of classical piano performances. Specifically. a keyboard piece by Bach is played in all 16 possible combinations of variations in 4 stylistic features: tempo, rhythm, dynamics, and phrasing. Subjects' adjectival ratings of these performances are factor analyzed into a reduced set of perceptual indices that are then submitted to multiple discriminant analysis to obtain a multidimensional perceptual space. The correlational fits of this perceptual space to the objective stylistic features support the hypotheses by indicating high overall perceptual veridicality (H 1 ) and equivalent accuracy for expert and naive subjects (H 2 ).