Researchers have invested a great deal in creating reliable, "gold-standard" creativity assessments that can be administered in controlled laboratory settings, though these efforts have come at the cost of not using ecologically and face-valid tasks. To help fill this critical gap, we developed and implemented a novel, face-valid…

There is growing evidence for the impact of arts engagement on later life cognition. However, confounding by socioeconomic factors may have led to an overestimation of this association. We analyzed data from 4,344 older adults in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. We measured participatory (e.g. painting, making music, crafts) and receptive (e.g.…

As art historians have noted, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907) occupies a very special place in the history of Western painting, both as the harbinger of 20th century modernism and as the progenitor of Cubism. For these reasons, as also for its convoluted history and multivariate interpretations, there is a vast art-historical…

Play is a significant event and opportunity for experience and discovery for children to find their place in the society, to search for themselves and their identity. This study aimed to analyze how the images of children and play were reflected on impressionist painting in Europe in the 19th century. First, the works of impressionist painters…

This study investigated the role of expertise and personality in reactions to challenges in contemporary paintings, here operationalized as violations in syntax and semantics. Thirty-eight expert and 56 naïve art viewers appraised 20 paintings (divided into four groups, i.e. no violation, only syntactic or semantic violation, and both…

Research has shown that creative performance, such as painting, influences affective and cognitive processes. Yet little is known about how tactile sensations experienced during painting determine what individuals feel and how they think while they create. Based on prior research, finger painting (compared to brush painting) was expected to…

The aim of this study was to investigate the differences of young school children in the visual preferences of paintings from the 20th century. The study was conducted at 4 elementary schools around Split, Croatia. A total of 200 children participated in the study, of which 87 were girls and 113 were boys aged 6-10 years. Visual preference testing…