Guiding the Eye and Mind: The Interaction of Semantic Cues and Narrative Structure in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Dunhuang Murals

This study investigates how external semantic cues and the internal narrative structure of artworks jointly influence the aesthetic experience of non-expert viewers towards complex narrative art. Utilizing Chinese Dunhuang murals as unique cross-cultural visual materials, the inquiry was conducted through two experiments. Experiment 1 employed a behavioral method to collect participants’ subjective ratings of aesthetic comprehension, interest, and liking. Experiment 2 used eye-tracking technology to objectively record metrics such as fixation patterns and gaze entropy during viewing to measure attentional processing and cognitive load. The results indicated that providing semantic cues significantly enhanced viewers’ aesthetic comprehension and interest and guided more efficient, goal-directed visual search patterns (indicated by lower gaze entropy). However, the effect of semantic cues on average fixation durations did not reach statistical significance after correction. A main effect of narrative structure was also found, with continuous narrative murals receiving the highest comprehension ratings. Crucially, a significant interaction was revealed: semantic cues primarily facilitated meaning construction for segmented murals and visual navigation strategy for continuous murals, whereas their impact was negligible for the structurally clear central-subject murals. This study supports that art appreciation is a constructive process driven by schema theory, involving an interplay between top-down cognitive guidance and bottom-up visual information. The findings may offer insights for museum exhibition design and art education practices.