Art knowledge training shapes understanding, inspires creativity and stimulates thinking

Abstract According to aesthetic cognitivism theory, art represents a source of knowledge that promotes understanding, creativity and thinking. However, it remains unclear exactly which features of art knowledge shape understanding and thinking. Our pre-registered study examined whether different types of art knowledge training (full audio-visual, brief visual or passive control) impact judgements of understanding, creative inspiration, thought stimulation and intellectual challenge and whether these effects generalize to new contexts. Using a training intervention paradigm and a multilevel Bayesian modelling approach, we found that participants (N ~ 50/training group) assigned higher ratings of understanding, creative inspiration and thought stimulation judgements to trained rather than to untrained artworks, as a function of art training type. Particularly, full audio-visual art training, which included visual and auditory descriptions, led to higher ratings than no training. The effects of training generalized to unseen artworks produced by the same artist but not to artworks by different artists. Compared to the passive control group, these effects were more robust for the full audio-visual than brief visual art training group. These findings highlight how art knowledge training can promote art understanding, creative inspiration and thought stimulation and generalizes to new settings that involve a similar artistic style.