The aesthetic appreciation of an object depends not only on its perceptual attributes, but also on the emotional context in which it is perceived and the cognitive processes associated with it. This study investigated whether guessing the meaning of Old Chinese characters correctly influenced aesthetic appreciation. In the first stage of the experiment, participants with no knowledge of Chinese were shown Old Chinese characters. In one condition they selected one meaning from two possible options for sixteen characters, then received feedback on the accuracy of their responses, and were shown the correct meaning (quiz condition). In a separate condition, participants were directly provided with the correct meanings of another sixteen characters (no quiz condition). In a second phase of the experiment, we measured how well participants had memorized the characters' meanings and collected ratings of how much they liked them. Participants recalled the meanings of characters they had guessed correctly better than those they had guessed incorrectly or those without a quiz. Additionally, success in guessing during the first phase influenced liking ratings in the second phase. Characters for which the meaning was guessed correctly were preferred to those for which it was guessed incorrectly, while the likingratings of characters from the no quiz condition occupy a median position between these two conditions. These findings strengthen the idea that aesthetic appreciation of pictures or objects is influenced not only by their features, but also by cognitive interaction with them.