Art and Gist

December 15th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Brainerd and Reyna propose a process for the relationship between knowledge and memory which they refer to as the ‘fuzzy trace’. This concept identifies a cognitive structure in the brain which is formed by repeated exposure to, and education about, specific experiences. So, for example, the experience of learning to drive a car, and of repeated driving behaviours, will create a mental schema or ‘trace’ of this behaviour. Similarly, repeated exposure to art, and education about art, will create a ‘trace’ of this art. This fuzzy trace is a kind of abstraction of all of the experiences, and represents the core, crystallised knowledge about the subject, and all of the individual experiences can be seen as ‘instances’ of this trace, (and I realise I am mixing metaphors wildly here). Significantly, this trace, or ‘gist’ as Brainerd and Reyna more colloquially call it, is then mobilised when new, related, experiences are encountered. So when driving a car, our moment by moment experience is referred to the existing ‘gist’, and this referring affects our actions and behaviour. Similarly, when we experience a new work of art, this experience is evaluated and understood in reference to our existing ‘gist’, and this referring produces the (critical) action and behaviour we have with regard to this artwork. This process works entirely subconsciously, and we do not think rationally prior to making a response or producing an action. Instead we get a feeling of ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’; an intuition about the experience which guides our behaviour.

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