Cognitivst-Constructivist Reverberations in Art Theory
Researches carried out in recent decades in the field of cognitive science reveal models, patterns, schemes, based on which the human mind encodes the information received through the senses. These schemes organize the experience of the individuals according with the principle of cognitive economy, facilitating the adaptation to the environment. The
reception of the artistic objects follows the same process of creating the scheme and then correcting it when reality changes. Theorists of literature, plastic arts and film explain that the construction of the meaning of a work involves the elaboration of assumptions and expectations based on already established (created) schemes. These hypotheses are tested and verified; if they are disproved, the schemes will be subject to a revision process – representing the very essence of reception as a creative act.
Keywords: art theory, theory of reception, cognitive sciences, constructivist psychological schemes, art reception as a creative act
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2. Immanule Kant, în Critica raţiunii pure, Ed. Iri, Bucureşti 1998, trad. de Nicolae Bagdasar şi Elena Moisuc, p. 168
3. Frederic C. Bartlett, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge University Press,1995
4. E. H. Gombrich, Artă şi Iluzie, Ed. Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1973, trad. Dumitru Mazilu, p. 85
5. Ibid., p.136.
6. Rita L. Atkinson, Richard C. Atkinson, E. E. Smith, Daryl J. Bem, Introducere în psihologie, Ed. Nota zece, Bucureşti, 2003, p.385-386
7. Jacques Aumont, L’image, Ed. Nathan, Paris, 1990, p. 62
8. E. H. Gombrich, Artă şi Iluzie, p.22
9. Wolfgang Iser, Actul lecturii, Ed. Paralela 45, Piteşti, 2006, p. 217-218
10. Teun A. Van Dijk, “Cognitive processing of literary discourse” în Poetics Today, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam, vol I, 1979, p. 143-160. URL: http://www.discourses.org/OldArticles/Cognitive%20processing%20of%20literary%20discourse.pdf, accesat 27.01.2013
11. Bordwell, David, Narration in the fiction film, Uni. Of Viscon Press, 1985, p. 31 “Perception becomes a process of active hypothesis-testing. The organisme is tuned to pick up data from the environment. Perception tends to be anticipatory, framing more or less likely expectations about what is out there”
12. Ibid, p. 32 “We assemble our visual world from sccesive glances which we check constantly against our reigning cognitive maps”
13. Edward Branigan, Narrative comprehension and Film, London and New York, 1992, p.14 „A schema tests and refines sensory data at the same time that the data is testing the adequacy of the (implicit) criteria embodied in the schema”
14. Palincsar, A. Sullivan, Social Constructivist Perspectives on Teaching and Learning, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 49, No. 1. (1998), p. 345-375.
15. Bordwell, David, op.cit. „I adopt the term viewer or spectator to name a hypthetical entity executin the operations relevant to constructing a story out of the film representations”, p. 30
16. Bordwell, David, idem, p. 33 „The narrative film is so made to encourage the spectator to execute story-constructing activities. The film presents cues, patterns and gaps that shape the viewer’s application of schemata and the testing of hypotheses”.
17. Bordwell, David, Narration in the fiction film, Univ. of Viscon. Press, 1985, p. 34-36.
