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Francis Mechner

Bio: Francis Mechner is an academic researcher from Columbia University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Perspective (graphical) & Experimental aesthetics. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 5 publications receiving 309 citations.

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TL;DR: In this article, the effects of different acquisition procedures on response variability were studied in three experiments with college students, where the computer keypressing task involved learning a sequence with a minimum number of presses on a subset of the keyboard.
Abstract: In three experiments with college students, the effects of different acquisition procedures on response variability were studied. The computer keypressing task involved learning a sequence with a minimum number of presses on a subset of the keyboard. Procedures differed in type of training and in the number, size, and sequence of training steps. Experiment 1 showed that instructions and shaping in three steps generated less variability in the number of responses made in each keypress sequence than shaping in six steps. Subsequent experiments showed that a large increase in the response requirement early in shaping increased variability. Postacquisition variability remained unchanged in the number of responses per sequence—the aspect of responding on which reinforcement was contingent—but declined in location and timing of keypressing. The results are discussed in terms of the implicit reinforcement of variability and how the acquisition of qualitatively different response strategies could influence variability.

29 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is suggested that aesthetic phenomena are a special case of a more pervasive aspect of behavior and proposed research approaches involving laboratory models and fMRI technology are proposed.
Abstract: Seeking to identify the common and distinguishing attributes of effects one might call “aesthetic,” I examined hundreds of examples in music, visual arts, poetry, literature, humor, performance arts, architecture, science, mathematics, games, and other disciplines. I observed that all involve quasi-emotional reactions to stimuli that are composites of multiple elements that ordinarily do not occur together and whose interaction, when appropriately potentiated, is transformative—different in kind from the effects of the separate constituent elements. Such effects, termed synergetic, can evoke surprise-tinged emotional responses. Aesthetic reactions, unlike many other kinds of emotional reactions, are never evoked by biologically urgent action-demanding events, such as threats or opportunities. The examined effects were created by various concept manipulation devices: class expansion, identification of new relations, repetition, symmetry, parsimony, and emotional displays for the audience to mirror (I identified a total of 16 such devices). The effects would occur only for individuals with the necessary priming, in circumstances that include effective potentiating factors. Synergetic stimuli that evoke aesthetic responses tend to be reinforcing, via mechanisms related to their biological utility during our evolution. I offer a theory as to how aesthetics may have evolved from its primordial pre-aesthetic roots, with examples of how consideration of those roots often explains aesthetic and related effects. The article suggests that aesthetic phenomena are a special case of a more pervasive aspect of behavior and proposes research approaches involving laboratory models and fMRI technology.

27 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a behavioral and biological theory as to how aesthetic reactions form is presented, taking a naturalistic perspective in exploring the likely phylogenetic origins of aesthetic rea...
Abstract: The article presents a behavioral and biological theory as to how aesthetic reactions form. It takes a naturalistic perspective in exploring the likely phylogenetic origins of aesthetic rea...

2 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the core of the aesthetic reaction is viewed as composed of a set of Pavlovian respondents rather than as a quasi-emotional reaction, and it is shown that aesthetic reactions are elicited by the conjunction of synergetic interactions among stimuli, behavioral history and current state of the reacting individual, and circumstantial features of the prevailing situation, including social and cultural factors.
Abstract: The commentaries prompted my realization that it is more useful to view the core of the aesthetic reaction as composed of a set of Pavlovian respondents than as a quasi-emotional reaction. They also increased my confidence in the generality of my conclusion, based in part on my analysis of hundreds of instances, that aesthetic reactions (as well as many other types of affective reactions) are elicited by the conjunction of (a) synergetic (unusual and transformative) interactions among stimuli, (b) the behavioral history and current state of the reacting individual, and (c) circumstantial features of the prevailing situation, including social and cultural factors. Aesthetic reactions can never be predicted or explained based on stimulus properties only. An important mechanism by which originally neutral stimuli acquire the power to elicit aesthetic reactions is Pavlovian pairing, often early in life, with stimuli that already possessed eliciting functions. The commentaries support my contention that a full understanding of the behavioral and biological aspects of aesthetic reactions requires a phylogenetic analysis of their evolutionary origins. Such an analysis suggests that the development of aesthetic sensibility is an important milestone in human evolution. The reinforcing properties of aesthetic reactions are key to the maintenance of such cognitive competencies as language and the manipulation of concepts, learning and inquiry skills, mentalization skills like visualizing and other types of thinking, various social skills, and cultural cohesion. The domain of aesthetic reinforcers extends beyond the arts to the quality of artifacts like tools, implements, or vehicles, certain types of interpersonal activity, and displays of competency. All of these reinforcer categories have biological utilities that account for the selection, throughout evolution, of individuals who were susceptible to those reinforcers’ effects. Also discussed are implications for therapy and education.

1 citations


Cited by
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Six-month-old infants discriminate between large sets of objects on the basis of numerosity when other extraneous variables are controlled, provided that the sets to be discriminated differ by a large ratio.

1,276 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The preverbal system of counting and arithmetic reasoning revealed by experiments on numerical representations in animals is described and a model of the fact retrieval process accounts for the salient features of the reaction time differences and error patterns revealed by experiment on mental arithmetic.

1,190 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The conclusion was that the same internal mechanism is used for counting and timing that can be used in several modes: the "event" mode for counting or the "run" and the "stop" modes for timing.
Abstract: The similarity of animal counting and timing processes was demonstrated in four experiments that used a psychophysical choice procedure. In Experiment 1, rats initially learned a discrimination between a two-cycle auditory signal of 2-sec duration and an eight-cycle auditory signal of 8-sec duration. For the number discrimination test, the number of cycles was varied, and the signal duration was held constant at an intermediate value. For the duration discrimination test, the signal duration was varied, and the number of cycles was held constant at an intermediate value. Rats were equally sensitive to a 4:1 ratio of counts (with duration controlled) and a 4:1 ratio of times (with number controlled). The point of subjective equality for the psychophysical functions that related response classification to signal value was near the geometric mean of the extreme values for both number and duration discriminations. Experiment 2 demonstrated that 1.5 mg/kg of methamphetamine administered intraperitoneally shifted the psychophysical functions for both number and duration leftward by approximately 10%. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the magnitude of cross-modal transfer from auditory signals to cutaneous signals was similar for number and duration. In Experiment 4 the mapping of number onto duration demonstrated that a count was approximately equal to 200 msec. The psychophysical functions for number and duration were fit with a scalar expectancy model with the same parameter values for each attribute. The conclusion was that the same internal mechanism is used for counting and timing. This mechanism can be used in several modes: the "event" mode for counting or the "run" and the "stop" modes for timing.

946 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The number domain is a prime example where strong evidence points to an evolutionary endowment of abstract domain-specific knowledge in the brain because there are parallels between number processing in animals and humans.

786 citations