How does contextual information affect aesthetic appreciation and gaze behavior in figurative and abstract artwork?

Numerous studies have investigated how providing contextual information with artwork influences gaze behavior, yet the evidence that contextually triggered changes in oculomotor behavior when exploring artworks may be linked to changes in aesthetic experience remains mixed. The aim of this study was to investigate how three levels of contextual information influenced people's aesthetic appreciation and visual exploration of both abstract and figurative art. Participants were presented with an artwork and one of three contextual information levels: a title, title plus information on the aesthetic design of the piece, or title plus information about the semantic meaning of the piece. We measured participants liking, interest and understanding of artworks and recorded exploration duration, fixation count and fixation duration on regions of interest for each piece. Contextual information produced greater aesthetic appreciation and more visual exploration in abstract artworks. In contrast, figurative artworks were highly dependent on liking preferences and less affected by contextual information. Our results suggest that the effect of contextual information on aesthetic ratings arises from an elaboration effect, such that the viewer aesthetic experience is enhanced by additional information, but only when the meaning of an artwork is not obvious.