The visual art schema: A cognitive network analysis of content and structure

Aesthetic experiences involve features that distinguish them from everyday experience. However, the cognitive mechanisms behind these features are not fully understood. According to schema theory, cognitive schemata guide how we interpret and engage with the world. Although schemata play a central role in theories of aesthetic experience, they have remained implicit or underdeveloped thus far. To address this issue, we developed a network model of the schema for visual art that reflects contextualized cognition in this domain. We mapped its content and structural organization and explored its implications for cognitive processing. In Study 1, we used free listing to identify core concepts related to situations of visual art reception. In Study 2, participants rated the associations between these concepts to create a weighted concept network. Network metrics revealed a highly interconnected, well integrated structure with a short average path length, moderate clustering, and low modularity. These results are consistent with a cohesive network model of the schema that, theoretically, would support efficient activation and consolidation in memory. Hierarchical clustering revealed functional subschemata at different levels of resolution, indicating a hierarchical and interconnected organization. Despite idiosyncrasies in the data, interindividual consistencies are consistent with a schema shared within this population, in line with the notion of a culturally shared schema. These findings offer an initial empirical model of the cognitive structure underlying visual art experiences and provide a basis for predicting expectations and responses associated with situations of art reception.