Assessing Heterogeneity in Students' Visual Judgment: Model-Based Partitioning of Image Rankings

Miles Tallon; Mark W Greenlee; Ernst Wagner; Katrin Rakoczy; Wolfgang Wiedermann; Ulrich Frick

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.881558

Assessing Heterogeneity in Students' Visual Judgment: Model-Based Partitioning of Image Rankings

Front Psychol. 2022 Aug 10:13:881558. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.881558. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Miles Tallon^{1

2}, Mark W Greenlee¹, Ernst Wagner³, Katrin Rakoczy⁴, Wolfgang Wiedermann⁵, Ulrich Frick²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
² HSD Research Centre Cologne, HSD University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, Germany.
³ Academy of Fine Art Munich, Munich, Germany.
⁴ Institute for School Education and Empirical Educational Research, Justus-Liebig University, Gießen, Germany.
⁵ Missouri Prevention Science Institute and Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology, University of Missouri, Columbia, KY, United States.

Abstract

Differences in the ability of students to judge images can be assessed by analyzing the individual preference order (ranking) of images. To gain insights into potential heterogeneity in judgement of visual abstraction among students, we combine Bradley-Terry preference modeling and model-based recursive partitioning. In an experiment a sample of 1,020 high-school students ranked five sets of images, three of which with respect to their level of visual abstraction. Additionally, 24 art experts and 25 novices were given the same task, while their eye movements were recorded. Results show that time spent on the task, the students' age, and self-reported interest in visual puzzles had significant influence on rankings. Fixation time of experts and novices revealed that both groups paid more attention to ambiguous images. The presented approach makes the underlying latent scale of visual judgments quantifiable.

Keywords: Bradley–Terry model; art education; assessment; model-based partitioning; ranking; visual abstraction; visual literacy.