Neurophysiological Responses to Digitalized and Natively Digital Art: The Role of Framing and Expectations in Virtual Museum Experiences

Introduction - Today, the context of art consumption plays a significant role in shaping the aesthetic experience, influencing both cognitive and emotional processes. With the increasing use of digital media for both the creation and the presentation of artworks, new modalities of art engagement have emerged. However, it remains largely unexplored whether a context that is coherent with the native format of the artwork (e.g., a virtual environment in which digital artworks are experienced) influences art perceptions. The present study investigates how the congruence between artwork type (digital vs. digitized) and context of consumption (digital environment) affects the aesthetic experience within a virtual exhibition. Methods - A between-subjects design was adopted in which participants (N=60) explored an immersive environment containing 12 abstract digital artworks selected through a pretest. Three experimental conditions were created, differing in the type of communication provided prior to the experience: no framing, congruent framing (“the artworks you are about to see are digital”), and incongruent framing (“the artworks you are about to see are digitalized”). The framing is conceptualized as a mechanism capable of activating interpretative expectations that guide the processing of artistic stimuli. A multimodal approach was employed, integrating neurophysiological measures (EEG, eye-tracking, skin conductance, and heart rate) with post-experience subjective evaluations, allowing for an integrated analysis of attentional, affective, and evaluative processes. Results - It is hypothesized that conditions of congruence between stimulus and context facilitate processing and enhance the quality of the aesthetic experience, increasing attentional, affective, and evaluative processes, whereas incongruent conditions generate greater dissonance and distinct neurophysiological patterns. This study contributes to the psychology of aesthetics and neuroaesthetics literature by providing empirical evidence on the role of expectations in shaping aesthetic experience in virtual environments and offers implications for the design of digital museum experiences, highlighting the importance of aligning content, context, users’ interpretative frameworks and on the cognitive and emotional processes involved.