Perceptual Aesthetics: Transcendent Emotion,Neurological Image

This article outlines major neurological factors driving human aesthetic response and offers an integrative model of the interaction of brain systems that forms that response. Having evolved as a matter of survival, these systems allow for advanced cognitive capabilities, and with them, aesthetic appreciation. Included in the discussion are symmetry and the nature of aesthetics, the neurology of images, the role of the left and right hemispheres in understanding art, the role of emotion in aesthetics, and bottom-up versus top-down neural processing as aesthetic functions. A concluding model addresses the complementary relationship between the apparent dichotomies of left and right brain, of conscious and unconscious processing, and of verbal and visual processing. Bilateral symmetry and tension resolution are used to explain a graduating scale of meaning and pleasure from simple to complex, and from archetypal to idiosyncratic within the range of neural aesthetic response.     

Visual Agenda-Setting,Emotion, and the BP Oil Disaster

This study seeks to identify the most memorable visual imagery of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill by comparing a content analysis of television images and a survey of the most-remembered images. The study compared visuals from weeks 1 and 6 of the disaster to a survey conducted a year later that asked respondents to freely recall the most memorable images of the disaster. The comparison showed respondents did indeed choose as the most memorable images the visuals coded with greatest frequency in the content analysis. However, the emotions evoked by the oil-soaked animals elevated that set of images to the most memorable—chosen by almost half of respondents. This set of images was number one with the respondents yet number eight in frequency in the content analysis. This study shows a visual agenda-setting effect heightened by emotion.     

Aesthetics

Books reviewed:
Emily Brady, Aesthetics of the Natural Environment
J. Hillis Miller, On Literature     

Aesthetics

Books reviewed:
Hopkins, R. Picture, Image and Experience
Margolis, J. What, After All, Is a Work of Art?     

Aesthetics

Books reviewed:
Kivy, P., Philosophies of Arts
Matravers, D., Art and Emotion     

Aesthetics

Books reviewed:
Noël Carroll, A Philosophy of Mass Art
jerrold Levinson (ed.), Aesthetics and Ethics. Essays at the Intersection     

Negative video as structure: Emotion,attention, capacity,and memory

This paper uses a limited capacity information processing theory of television viewing to investigate the effects of graphic negative video at four levels of processing (attention, capacity, encoding, and retrieval) and on two dimensions of emotional experience (arousal and valence). Results indicate that the presence of negative video in news stories increases attention, increases the amount of capacity required to process the message, increases the ability to retrieve the story, facilitates recognition of information presented during the negative video and inhibits recognition for information presented before the negative video. Results also indicate that the introduction of negative video increases the self‐reported negative emotional impact of the story — making it more arousing and more negative.     

论图书馆美学

文章从图书馆美学课题研究的背景与动机和阐述入手，揭示了研究的对象。内容及作用，同时就此项研究对图书馆的建设及图书馆事业的发展现实意义作出了相应的价值评价。     

美学视野下的名记黄远生

在美学视野下,本文分析了黄远生个人及其新闻思想、通讯写作所体现的价值,并找到其与美学的契合点,以期从一个全新的视角认识和展示我国报界奇人——黄远生。     

读书、藏书与著书--我的读书情怀

前段时间,应《河南图书馆学刊》主编陶善耕之约,为该刊“名人书缘”栏目撰写文稿。我曾说明不能应允：因为我不是名人,只是一个普通的教育工作者;虽然一生读书、藏书、著书,与书结下了不解的情缘,也曾撰写和发表过一些拙作,但成绩微不足道,更谈不上学术贡献。然终因盛情难却,还是应允了。