Aesthetic judgment is one of the most valued human characteristics, being regarded as a remarkable display of intelligence. Popular knowledge tells us that it is purely cultural. In this paper, we present a brief theory according to which aesthetics depends on biological and cultural issues, namely on visual image processing. We present an implementation of this theory and the experimental resu...

Automating the process of newspaper page composition is a complicated task especially because it involves an automatic evaluation of layout aesthetics. Dealing with aesthetics is a major problem since it does not seem possible to describe the concept of aesthetics by a few simple rules. It is investigated whether artificial neural networks are suited for the task of evaluating layout aesthetics...

A study was conducted to explore associations that may exist between user perceptions of aesthetics and usability in an attempt to validate Norman’s assertion that “attractive things work better”. Participants were run in a semi between-subjects design study. Judgements for aesthetics and usability were elicited prior to and after each test run with a record kept of performance. Pre-use and pos...

The authors examined recruitment message viewing time, information recall, and attraction in a Web-based context. In particular, they extended theory related to the cognitive processing of recruitment messages and found that the provision of customized information about likely fit related to increased viewing time and recall when good aesthetics were also present. A 3-way interaction among mode...

Background: Practitioners in a variety of spiritual/religious traditions have described “mystical experiences”, defined by common set qualities. The “Mystical Experience Questionnaire” (MEQ30) provides validated and quantitative measure mystical experience, has been used successfully to demonstrate that the hallucinogenic substance psilocybin triggers mystical-type e...