Aesthetic Stability in Development

The stability of human aesthetic preferences has been little studied. Even basic parameters such as the typical level of stability of healthy adults are unknown. This cross-sectional study focuses on stability in early child development utilizing aesthetic preference for paintings and photographs as a means of measurement. Our results show that while stability does not differ for paintings versus photographs, older children (7-9 years) are significantly more stable than younger children (3-6 years). In addition, older children perform significantly better on an explicit memory task though memory is a weak predictor of stability compared to age. Our results suggest that aesthetic stability appears to emerge surprisingly early in development, a finding that is in line with the AD patient results (Graham et al. 2013, Halpern et al. 2008) in that it confirms the robustness of aesthetic stability. It remains to be seen how other stages of development—or indeed how the panoply of relevant psychological factors—influence aesthetic stability.