Is there an empirically demonstrable preference for the axes of mirror symmetry that reflects the order of detectability identified

by Wagemans (1996)?

Dionne Donnelly Module Code: PSYC223 Word Count: 2563

Abstract Research has found evidence for an oblique effect (orientation anisotropy) within the visual system. The majority of research shows that vertical bilateral symmetry is the most salient, followed by horizontal and then oblique orientations. However, what is unclear is whether this salience also leads to a significant aesthetic preference for the vertical orientation over the other orientations. This study aimed to test whether the oblique effect does lead to a significant aesthetic preference for vertical bilateral symmetry. This was done using by presenting 60 participants with nine abstract images in the three orientations counterbalanced across three conditions, with participants indicating their preference on a Likert-type scale. The study found there was a significant preference for vertical over horizontal and oblique orientations, but no significant preference for horizontal over oblique orientation as previous research had suggested. This shows that although the majority of research supports the assumptions of the oblique effect, there is still research which must be done to test its validity and reliability across situations.

Introduction Symmetry is an intrinsic phenomenon in the world around us, occurring both naturally and in artifacts and architecture (Loy & Ekhlund, 2006, pg. 508, see also Wynn, 2002). Symmetry is thought to be a visual regularity which the visual system is saliently sensitive to (van der Helm & Treder, 2009). Wagemans (1999) identified four main Euclidean transformations or symmetries: Translation, rotation, bilateral (reflectional or mirror symmetry), and glide reflection (a combination of reflection and translation), with bilateral symmetry being the most salient and familiar in everyday life (Wagemans, 1997, Wynn, 2002) and research has indicated that 2

bilateral symmetry may even be detected preattentively (see Evans, Wenderoth & Cheng, 2000, Wagemans, 1997, Wynn, 2002). Wynn (2002, pg. 390) described bilateral symmetry as half a pattern which is duplicated and reversed on the opposite side. Bilateral symmetry is thought to be so salient because it is commonly seen in the natural world in the body plans of many organisms and in the decorative systems [of] almost all human culture (Wynn, 2002, pg. 390). However, Latto (1995, pg. 68) postulated that particular forms are aesthetically moving not because they reflect the properties of the world, but because they reflect the properties of our brains.

One indication of our preference for symmetry is how prone we are to detecting it. Latto (1995) argued that the pervasiveness of symmetry throughout nature, art and architecture and our superior capacity for symmetry detection cause us to find symmetry aesthetically pleasing. Wagemans (1999, pg. 360) proposed that our detection of symmetry is affected by both the orientation of the axis of symmetry and location in the visual field. However, for the purposes of this study, only the effects of degree of axis orientation were considered. The majority of research into symmetry has investigated the ability of participants to detect it across different orientations (vertical, horizontal and the two main diagonals) using eye movements (e.g. Plumhoff & Schirillo, 2009), the number of correct responses and response times as a measure (Wagemans, van Goole & Dydewalle, 1992). This method has mostly yielded results which support the oblique effect (also known as orientation anisotropy), which states that vertical is the easiest orientation to detect, then horizontal, then the diagonals (see Royer, 1981, and Wynn, 2002) For example, Ogilrie and Taylor (1958, cited in Latto & Russell-Duff, 2002) found that obliquely oriented fine wires have to be twice as wide as vertical and horizontal wires in order to 3

be perceived. In a review by Wagemans, van Goole and Dydewalle (1992, pg. 501) it was concluded that averaged across experiments, the rank ordering of axis orientations according to accuracy data clearly supports an oblique effect. According to Wagemans order of detectability, bilateral symmetry is easiest to detect on a vertically oriented axis, followed by the horizontal, and then oblique orientations, it has also been found that detection is better at 45o and 135o than at other oblique orientations (Wagemans, 1992). This was supported by Wenderoth (1994) who looked at a total of 16 orientations and yielded the same result: better performance at the main diagonals, with an incremental decrease in performance the larger the deviation from the main diagonal. He concluded that the main diagonals are more salient due to their intrinsic benefit to the visual system. Furthermore, Higgins and Stuttz (1948, cited in Latto & RussellDuff, 2002) found that it is the image orientation which affects detection rather than the object orientation, as when participants tilted their heads to align the retinal field with the oblique lines presented, their visibility was significantly improved. Therefore, in the present study it was decided to only include the vertical, horizontal and two main diagonal (or oblique) orientations, and that only the image orientation should be studied, because as long as retinal field orientation remained constant, orientation detection performance should not have been affected.

Performance has been considered important because it has been argued (e.g. Latto, 1995) that the easier something is to see, the more aesthetically pleasing it is. Latto, Brain and Kelly (2000) asked participants to rate their liking of a selection of Mondrians paintings in various orientations. They found a stronger preference for the paintings with lines oriented vertically and horizontally. In a related study by Latto and Russell-Duff (2002) it was found that in a sample of twentieth century paintings, horizontal and vertical line orientations were employed more by 4

artists than obliquely oriented lines in both landscape and portrait formats. This also supported the concept that line orientations which are preferentially processed i.e. horizontal and vertical, are also more aesthetically pleasing, as their more frequent use makes them aesthetically more potent (Latto & Russell-Duff, 2002). The above study cites that this effect may be due to more cells in subdivisions of the visual cortex responding to horizontal and vertical orientation than to the oblique (see Coppola, White, Fitzpatrick & Purves, 1998). Latto (1995) argued that aesthetic preference may be partly determined by the amount of neural activity the stimuli generates in the visual system. For example, stimuli such as faces, hands and lines appear to have privileged access to our visual system, and they also appear to be stimuli which we prefer over others, Latto termed this interaction the aesthetic primitive as a stimuli will be intrinsically interesting because it resonates with the properties of the visual system processing it (Latto, 1995, pg. 68). This aesthetic preference for symmetry may also be seen in the animal kingdom: Enquist and Arak (1994) argue that many other species aside from humans have a preference for symmetry. It was found by Rodriguez, Gumbert, Hempel de Ibarra, Kunze & Giurfa (2004) that flower-nave bumblebees have an innate preference for symmetrical flowers. Anderson, Kuwahata, Kuroshima, Leighty, & Fujita (2005) found that both capuchin and squirrel monkeys show preferential manipulation of stimulus cards bearing symmetrical images. From this it can be tentatively concluded that animals may also show an aesthetic preference for bilateral symmetry, although it is more likely to be related to adaptive reasons such as mate selection and food identification.

In the present study, in order to test if there was a preference for the vertical and horizontal orientations Likert-type scales were used. Likert scales presume there is an underlying 5

continuous variable (such as aesthetic preference) which can be quantified and offer an insight into the respondents preference in comparison to others (Clason & Dormody, n.d.). A review of the literature shows that the majority of studies use scales of either five or seven responses (Preston & Colman, 2000) and Cox (1980, pg. 420) stated that seven is the modal number of response alternatives for the scales reviewed by Peter (1979). Therefore, the number of responses available to participants in this study was seven, on a continuous scale from 1 (Ugly) to 7 (Attractive).

The aim of this study was to test whether participants do prefer abstract stimuli with a vertically oriented axis over the other orientations, therefore we presented participants with 12 monochrome abstract stimuli and asked them to indicate their liking of the image. No colour was used as it may have served as a potential confound. Research (e.g. Morales & Pashler, 1999) has shown that human symmetry detection is insensitive to colour, and although detection of colour symmetry is as accurate as other symmetries, it relies on a different processing strategy of selectively attending to each colour at a time. After consideration of previous research it was hypothesised that there would be a significant preference for vertical bilateral symmetry over horizontal, and for horizontal over oblique bilateral symmetry.

Method Participants 60 participants, 23 male and 37 female, were found using opportunity sampling. Participants were aged between 19 and 75 years (M = 31.03). No other demographics were collected as they were deemed unnecessary. The participants were organised into three groups of 20. Materials Twelve monochrome abstract inkblot images were obtained via an internet search engine. Microsoft PowerPoint was used to create one slideshow of abstract images per group, with each slideshow containing 12 images in either a vertical, horizontal, or oblique orientation. The images in each slideshow were counterbalanced using a Latin square. The total number of responses per orientation was 240. Design The study was a between subjects survey design. This was done using a 7 response Likert scale. The independent variable (IV) was the orientation of the images, and consisted of three levels vertical (1), horizontal (2) and oblique (3) and the dependent variable (DV) was score on the scale. Procedure Approval was requested from and granted by the university ethics committee (see Appendix 1). A group of six undergraduate researchers took part in weekly meetings over several weeks (see Appendix 2). Collectively they selected twelve monochromatic abstract images (see Appendix 3). These images were then used to create three different Microsoft PowerPoint slideshows - A, 7

B, and C (see Appendices 4,5 and 6 respectively) - showing only one orientation of each image, with each images orientation being counterbalanced across the slideshows using a Latin square. Participants were informed of their consent and asked to read the participant information sheet (see Appendix 7) Participants saw each image for five seconds, followed by a blank screen controlled by the participant once they had noted their response on the Likert scale (see Appendix 8). A pair of researchers was assigned to each group, with each researcher recruiting ten participants each. Participants were informed of their right to withdraw and were assured that their data would be anonymous. The Likert scale asked participants to rate how attractive they found each of the images on a scale of 1 (Ugly) to 7 (Attractive). Once the data were collected they were entered into the SPSS programme (see Appendix 9) and tested for parametric assumptions via histograms (see Appendix 10) they were analysed using the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test (see Appendix 11) followed by a Mann-Whitney U pairwise comparison (see Appendix 12).

Results As the data was non-parametric, a Kruskal Wallis test for independent samples was used. Group 1, n = 240, vertical. Group 2, n = 240, horizontal. Group 3, n = 240, oblique. The vertical orientation recorded a higher median score (Md = 4) than the other two orientations, which both recorded median values of 3. The Kruskal Wallis test found a statistically significant difference in orientation preference across the three orientations (Chi-square = 15.40, df = 2, p < 0.001).

Figure 1: Showing the median scores for each condition.

As the Kruskal Wallis test did not show where these significant differences lay, a Mann-Whitney U pairwise comparison was conducted, with a Bonferroni correction dictating a necessary significance level of 0.017 or less. The Mann-Whitney U test revealed a significant difference between the vertical (Md = 4, n = 240) and horizontal (Md = 3, n = 240) orientations, U = 23228, z = -3.72, p < 0.001 (one-tailed), r = -0.17. A significant difference was also found between the vertical (Md = 4, n =240) and oblique (Md = 3, n = 240) orientations, U = 24429, z = -2.92, p = 0.002 (one-tailed), r = -0.13. The Mann-Whitney U test also revealed a non-significant difference between the horizontal and oblique orientations, U = 27554, z = -0.84, p = 0.202 (one-tailed), r = -0.04.

Discussion It was found that there was a significant preference for the vertical orientation over both the horizontal and oblique orientations, in concordance with the majority of previous research, such

as Latto (1995), Latto, Brain and Kelly (2000), Latto and Russell-Duff (2002), Wagemans (1997, 1999). However, there was no significant difference between the horizontal and oblique orientation which is contrary to findings of the research cited above. Therefore it only partially supports the assumptions of the oblique effect.

There are several criticisms of this study. Firstly, perfect bilateral symmetry rarely occurs in the natural world, it is usually only seen in artificial situations such as the one above where participants view perfect symmetry from an orthogonal viewing position relatively close to the image. In order to remedy this, further research could determine preferences for skewed symmetry which is more closely associated with the symmetry we see in the natural world (see Wagemans, van Gool, & Ydewalle, 1992).

The second criticism is also methodological and could account for the nonsignificant result between the horizontal and oblique orientations, as it is possible that limiting rating scales to five or seven points may lead to inaccurate results due to too few options, and therefore the majority of responses being around the median, as was the case with this study (see Champney & Marshall. 1939, Latto, Brain & Kelly, 2002 and Matell & Jacoby, 1971). However, Symonds (1924, cited in Mattell & Jacoby, 1971, pg. 658) has stated that the problem of determining the number of steps to utilize is primarily one of reliability. Symonds argues that if researchers were to use more than seven points, the subsequent increases in reliability would not be worth the effort involved in attempting to fill out the scale. Therefore despite the scale lacking what could be described as an appropriate number of responses needed to gauge aesthetic preference, 10

the number of possible responses lend the scale maximal reliability in relation to effort on the part of the participant.

In conclusion, there was a significant preference for vertical over horizontal and oblique orientations of abstract images, as hypothesised and in accordance with previous research. However, this study failed to find a significant difference in preference between the horizontal and vertical orientations, which may have been due to methodological flaws in the study. The results of this study question how just how true this statement made by Latto (1995, pg. 78) is: Just as some wavelengths are primary in the perception of colour, so horizontal and vertical are primary in the perception of orientation.

References Anderson, J. R., Kuwahata, H., Kuroshima, H., Leighty, K. A., Fujita, K. (2005). Are monkeys aesthetists? Rensch (1957) revisited. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 31(1), 71-78. Champney, H. & Marshall, H (1939). Optimal refinement of the rating scale. Journal of Applied Psychology. 23(3), 323-331. Clason, D. L. & Dormody, T. J. (n.d.). Analyzing data Measured by individual Likert-type items. Journal of Agricultural Education, 35(4), 31-35.

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Coppola, D. M., White, L. E., Fitzpatrick, D. & Purves, D. (1998). Unequal representation of cardinal and oblique contours in ferret visual cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95, 2621-2623.

Cox, E. P. (1980). The optimal number of responses for a scale: A review. Journal of Marketing Research, 17(4), 407-422. Enquist, M. & Arak, A. (1994). Symmetry, beauty and evolution. Nature, 372, 169-172. Evans, C. S., Wenderoth, P., & Cheng, K. (2000). Detection of bilateral symmetry in complex biological images. Perception, 29, 31-42. Latto, R. (1995). The brain of the beholder. In, R. Gregory (Ed.), The Artful Eye, 66-94. Latto, R., Brain, D. & Kelly, B. (2000). An oblique effect in aesthetics: Homage to Mondrian (1872-1944). Perception, 29, 981-987. Latto, R. & Russell-Duff, K. (2002). An oblique effect in the selection of line orientation by twentieth century painters. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 20(1), 49-60. Loy, G. & Eklundh, J. (2006). Detecting symmetry and symmetric constellations of features. In A. Leonardis, H. Bischof, and A. Pinz (Eds.), Computer Vision - ECCV 2006, Part II, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3952, 508521. Berlin: Springer. Mattell, M. S., & Jacoby, J. (1971). Is there an optimal number of alternatives for Likert scale items? Study I: Reliability and validity. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 31, 657-674.

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Morales, D. & Pashler, H. (1999). No role for colour in symmetry perception. Nature, 399, 115116. Plumhoff, J. E. & Schirillo, J. A. (2009). Modrian, eye movements and the oblique effect. Perception, 38, 719-731. Preston, C.C. & Colman, A. M. (2000). Optimal number of response categories in rating scales: reliability, validity, discriminating power, and respondent preferences. Acta Psychologica, 104, 1-15. Rodriguez, I., Gumbert, A., Hempel de Ibarra, N., Kunze, J. & Giurfa, M. (2004). Symmetry is in the eye of the beeholder: Innate preference for bilateral symmetry in flower-naive bumblebees. Naturwissenschaften, 91, 374-377.

Royer, F. L., (1981). Detection of symmetry. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 7, 1186-1210. van der Helm, P. A. & Treder, M. S. (2009). Detection of (anti)symmetry and (anti)repetition: Perceptual mechanisms versus cognitive strategies. Vision Research, 49, 2754-2763. Wagemans, J. (1997). Characteristics and models of human symmetry perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 1(9), 346-352. Wagemans, J. (1999). Parallel visual processes in symmetry perception: Normality and pathology. Documenta Ophthalmologica, 95, 359370.

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Wagemans, J., van Gool, L. & dYdewalle, G. (1992). Orientational Effects and component processes in symmetry detection. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 44A, 475-508. Wenderoth, P. (1994). The salience of vertical symmetry. Perception, 23, 221236. Wynn, T. (2002). Archaeology and cognitive evolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 389438.

For appendices, please refer to the compact disc provided.

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