Abstract
People vary widely in their innate ability to draw figures realistically. Drawing training should improve the ability to ignore 3-dimensional context to draw apparent shape instead of the figure's physical characteristics (overcoming shape constancy effects). Here, we used skeletal outlines of cuboid polyhedrons and quadrilateral surfaces, rotated around the viewing plane and lacking texture and shading, which were rendered as anaglyphs to elicit the perception of 3-dimensional objects. Fifty-three participants completed a shape constancy task, in which they were instructed to report the physical or apparent width of a shape using the method of adjustment over a series of 768 trials. Trials were completed in blocks of 48 trials, consisting of 2 repetitions of 8 angles of rotation of 3 object widths, all of a particular level of instruction (physical or apparent width) and context (absent or present). Participants also completed a survey about their training in realistic drawing, which was used to form two groups – those who had taken a college-level course in realistic drawing (24 "artists") and those who had not (29 "non-artists"). Statistical analyses on the magnitude of width judgment errors, averaging across repetitions and object width, revealed significant three-way interactions among instruction, context, and angle (replicating our previous results) and instruction, context, and training in art. Participants from both groups (artists and non-artists) performed equally when making judgments about quadrilateral surfaces' physical and apparent widths. As might be expected, artists made smaller errors when judging the apparent width of cuboid polyhedrons. However, these artists made larger errors when judging the physical width of cuboid polyhedrons. This is the first evidence that there is possibly a cost to training in realistic drawing. Further studies are required to determine whether drawing training shifts perception toward the apparent image, and whether innate drawing skill produces similar effects.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018