Systematic Distortions in Vertical Placement of Features in Drawings of Faces and Houses



Harrison, Neil R, Jones, Julia and Davies, Simon J
(2017) Systematic Distortions in Vertical Placement of Features in Drawings of Faces and Houses. I-PERCEPTION, 8 (1). 2041669517691055-.

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Abstract

A crucial part of accurately drawing portraits is the correct vertical positioning of the eyes. Non-experts typically place the eyes higher on the head than they are actually located; however, the explanation for this remains unclear. In Experiment 1, participants drew faces from memory and directly copied from a photograph, to confirm whether biases in observational drawings were related to biases in memory-based drawings. In Experiment 2, participants drew a cat's face, to test explanations by Carbon and Wirth for the positional bias: the 'view-from-below, the 'head-as-box', and the 'hair-as-hat' explanations. Results indicated that none of these three explanations could fully account for the vertical positioning biases observed in drawings of the cat's face. The findings are discussed in relation to the idea that distortions of vertical alignment in drawings may be related to the position of the most salient features within a face or object.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: attention, attention to features/objects, face perception, long-term memory
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 28 Feb 2017 09:37
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 07:15
DOI: 10.1177/2041669517691055
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3006087