Cognitive Science and the Arts

Cognitive science and the arts are natural partners. The arts are produced by the mind, the brain, and the body and comprehended, interpreted, and appreciated by the mind, the brain, and the body. The arts make special contributions to cognitive science by providing a rich, natural, multisensory, multi-cultural arena for study and analysis. Recent research bears this out. Projects connecting the arts and cognition have been scattered throughout the cognitive sciences. Artists of all genres create things, creating and revising as they proceed. Some have been investigating the interactions of artists, musicians, and designers with their external creations, notably, sketches and gestures, in both creating and communicating, how they get insight and learn from externalizing thought (e. g., Goel, 2007; Healey and Thibaut, 2007; Healey, Swoboda, and Umata, 2007; Kirsh, 2012; Tversky and Suwa, 2009). Studies of the ways the eye, brain, and hand interact in drawing have enabled convincing simulations of drawing that create sketches recognizably in the style of individual artists (e. g., Tresset and Lemayrie, 2013). Brain research has revealed the brain processes underlying the appreciation of artistic creations (e. g., Berger and Turrow, 2011; Brattico and Pearce, 2013; Menon and Levitin, 2005) as well as the convergent and divergent thinking that is needed for creating original works of art (e.g., Jung, et al., 2010). New findings of the ways people perceive and comprehend the ordinary events of life have been used to interpret the ways people create and understand narratives, those in words, film, and depictions (e.g., Tversky, 2011; Zacks & Magliano, 2011). The exploration of children’s narratives about their imaginary friends reveal new understandings of the many roles of imagination in our lives (e. g., Taylor, 2009). A richer understanding of aesthetic judgments has been emerging from research on perception (e.g., Palmer), on the brain (e. g., Chatterjee, 2013), on the body (e. g., Krumhansl, 1997; Stevens, et al, 2007), and on the senses (Tsay, 2013). The body is intimately involved in many arts, notably dance; the various roles of using the body as a representational system and their participation in the creation and understanding of dance have yielded new understandings of the ways the body can serve thought, especially non-propositional, nonverbal thought (e.g., Kirsh, 2012). Performances, such as music, dance, and theater, entail interactions with many players and with audiences. Many of the insights that have come from years of study of language in use are now providing insights into the ways players in performances interact with each other and with their audiences (e. g., Haviland, 2011; Kirsh, 2013; Schober, 2006; Stevens, et al., 2007). These projects amply illustrate the remarkable depth and breadth of the contributions of a cognitive science approach to the arts. Impressive as this overview is, it is only a partial overview of the many ways that cognitive science and the arts interact. Most of these groups work in isolation with few opportunities to interact with each other and learn from each other. These diverse and rich contributions are typically not known to other groups or to broader audiences. We propose this workshop in order to bring these groups together and to bring these exciting projects to the attention of the broader cognitive science community.