Visual object recognition ability is not related to experience with visual arts

Abstract

Visual arts require the ability to process, categorize, recognize, and understand a variety of visual inputs. These challenges may engage and even influence mechanisms that are also relevant for visual object recognition beyond visual arts. A domain-general object recognition ability that applies broadly across a range of visual tasks was recently discovered. Here, we ask whether experience with visual arts is correlated with this domain-general ability. We developed a new survey to measure general visual arts experience and use it to measure arts experience in 142 individuals in whom we also estimated domain-general object recognition ability. Despite our measures demonstrating high reliability in a large sample size, we found substantial evidence (BF01 = 9.52) for no correlation between visual arts experience and general object recognition ability. This suggests that experience in visual arts has little influence on object recognition skills or vice versa, at least in our sample ranging from low to moderately high levels of arts experience. Our methods can be extended to other populations and our results should be replicated, as they suggest some limitations for the generalization of programs targeting visual literacy beyond the visual arts.

Figure 1.

Schematics of visual object recognition tests. (a) Matching Test with Ziggerins. Participants are judged whether two serially presented images were the same object regardless of rotation and size changes. (b) NOMT with Greebles. Participants first studied six targets and then were instructed to select the targets against two distractors. Objects during test could be rotated and/or overlaid with noise.

Figure 2.

Scatterplot of Z-scored Arts Experience and o. Each marker represents an individual participant. Black triangles are participants with an undergraduate major related to visual arts, gray circles are other majors or no undergraduate education.