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

Harrison, Neil and Jones, Julia and Davies, Simon J. (2017) Systematic Distortions in Vertical Placement of Features in Drawings of Faces and Houses. i-perception, 8 (1). pp. 1-13. ISSN 2041-6695 (Accepted for Publication)

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Abstract

A crucial part of accurately drawing portraits is the correct vertical positioning of the eyes. Nonexperts
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
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User:	Neil Harrison
Date Deposited:	24 Mar 2017 11:55
Last Modified:	29 Jun 2020 13:57
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/1905

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