Chen Y, Norton D, McBain R
McLean Hospital, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA 02478, United States.
Schizophr Res. 2008 Oct;105(1-3):245-51. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2008.06.024. Epub 2008 Aug 16.
The way schizophrenia patients perceive the world is largely mysterious. Understanding and appreciating the visual world begins with the perception of basic visual features, which is altered in this mental disorder. Yet, the roles basic visual features play in functional activities such as appreciation of art are unclear. This study examined the effects of visual feature manipulation on beauty perception of art in schizophrenia patients (n=29) and in normal controls (n=30). Three pieces of art--The Starry Night (Van Gogh), Mona Lisa (Da Vinci) and a natural landscape photograph (anonymous)--were manipulated in terms of their coloration (removal of color), spatial frequency content (low or high-frequency pass) and visual noise level (with added noise). Subjects judged the beauty of the original and visual-feature-manipulated artworks by rating each piece individually (1 to 7) and by ranking all pieces from most to least beautiful. For the three original art pieces, averaged ratings and rankings were similar in patients and controls. However, when the visual features of the original pieces were manipulated, changes in the beauty ratings were significantly smaller in patients. The reduced sensitivity to visual feature manipulations suggests that the modulation of basic visual signals, often used for vivid and dynamic expressions in art, may be under-appreciated in schizophrenia.
精神分裂症患者感知世界的方式在很大程度上是个谜。对视觉世界的理解和欣赏始于对基本视觉特征的感知，而这种感知在这种精神障碍中会发生改变。然而，基本视觉特征在诸如艺术欣赏等功能活动中所起的作用尚不清楚。本研究考察了视觉特征操纵对精神分裂症患者（n = 29）和正常对照者（n = 30）艺术美感的影响。对三件艺术作品——《星月夜》（梵高）、《蒙娜丽莎》（达芬奇）和一张自然风景照片（佚名）——在色彩（去除颜色）、空间频率内容（低通或高通）和视觉噪声水平（添加噪声）方面进行了操纵。受试者通过分别对每件作品进行评分（1至7分）以及将所有作品从最美到最不美进行排序来评判原始作品和经过视觉特征操纵的艺术作品的美感。对于三件原始艺术作品，患者和对照者的平均评分和排名相似。然而，当对原始作品的视觉特征进行操纵时，患者的美感评分变化明显较小。对视觉特征操纵的敏感性降低表明，在精神分裂症中，常用于艺术中生动和动态表达的基本视觉信号的调制可能未得到充分重视。
