Face recognition accuracy as a function of mode of representation.

The relative effectiveness of line drawings and photographs as ways of representing information in face reconstruction systems was compared in 2 experiments. In Exp I, 3 independent groups of college students (27 in each group) were required to identify well-known faces shown either as photographs, detailed line drawings, or outline drawings. Photographs were significantly more effective as stimuli than line drawings, which in turn were superior to outlines. In Exp II, 80 Ss aged 16–60 yrs recruited from the public participated in a recognition task. Photographs and detailed line drawings of previously unknown faces served as stimuli. Ss recognized photographs significantly more accurately than line drawings, even when the pose of the target was changed between the exposure and test series. Results are discussed in terms of the development of computer-based face reconstruction systems and theories of face recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's comprehension of actions depicted in photographs.

Two experiments investigated comprehension of pictorial representations in 160 3–6 yr old children. In Exp I, Ss were asked to mimic the poses of children depicted in black and white photographs, to mimic the same poses depicted by the live model, and to describe the contents of the photographs. Exp II replicated the 1st experiment with line drawings and a doll. Performance was significantly better with the live model than with the photographs, drawings, or doll. A comparison among the 3 representational forms indicated that photographs were the most difficult to mimic and describe and that the doll was the least difficult to describe. Results are discussed with respect to the developing ability to interpret symbolic representations and the effects of media-specific characteristics. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for pictures: Does an age-related decline exist?

Examined the effects of varying detail on memory. In Exp I, pictorial embellishment was varied by presenting 27 Ss aged 60+ yrs and 30 undergraduates with normal photographs, high-contrast photographs, or line drawings, and testing their memory immediately and 4 wks later. All of the Ss did best with the most elaborate pictures (normal photographs), and old Ss remembered as well as young at the immediate but not at the delayed interval. In Exp II, with 21 old Ss and 21 18–36 yr olds, detail was varied by adding background to line drawings of a central object. Ss of both ages profited from enhanced background detail, and there were no differences in memory as a function of age. Exp III replicated Exp II, except that Ss (10 elderly and 17 college students) studied the pictures under divided attention conditions. Again, Ss of both ages recognized elaborate pictures best, and no significant age differences emerged. Results suggest that old and young adults profit from visual embellishment and that memory for meaningful pictures remains relatively intact with age. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensitivity of early human vision to 3-D orientation in line drawings.

Argues against the view that all the difficult work of perception occurs in the 50 msec that elapse between when edge-extraction processes and identification of objects in photographs and line drawings are accomplished. Much more than edge-extraction is accomplished by the early visual processes. To illustrate this view, a computational model is described that is capable of recovering the 3-D orientation of objects from some line drawings, rapidly and in parallel. Data from visual search experiments with human observers are presented in support of this model. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's belief in photographic fidelity.

Photographs give the impression that they capture reality more truly than other pictorial forms such as drawings and paintings. This study, conducted with 100 operational children ( 5 yrs 10 mo to 7 yrs 3 mo old) and 100 pre-operational children (5 yrs 10 mo to 7 yrs 2 mo old), was concerned with the child's belief as to whether a series of photographs and a parallel series of drawings that depicted illogical or logical outcomes to a conservation of liquid procedure more truly represented reality than directly perceived logical and illogical referent events. Results show the significant influence of the representational medium on fidelity judgments. Six-year-olds treated photographs as having greater fidelity to the reality they depicted than drawings had, but both forms of representation were in general less compelling than real materials themselves. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facial expressions of emotion: Does the prototype represent central tendency, frequency of instantiation, or an ideal?

Examines whether typicality of facial expressions (FE) of emotion is predicted best by their values on an ideal dimension (suitability to express a particular emotion), their frequency of instantiation (FI) as an expression of a particular emotion, or their deviation from the central tendency (CT) of the respective FE category. The subjects (Ss) judged FE line drawings of anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, and surprise differing in intensity. In study 1, 82 Ss (mean age 24.4 yrs) divided into four independent groups were tested: the typicality group, the FI group, the ideal group, and the CT group. The Ss in Study 2 (mean age 23.5 yrs) sought to replicate Study 1 with a different operation of typicality: "how good an example" an FE is for the respective emotion category. The results strongly indicate that they are structured like goal-derived categories, where typicality of members varies according to their suitability to obtain a certain goal. This indicates that suitability to express the respective emotion is highly salient in people's representations of categories of FEs of emotion and has become the standard by which typicality is judged. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related changes in children's use of external representations.

This study explored children's use of external representations. Experiment 1 focused on representations of self. Self-recognition was assessed by a mark test as a function of age (3 vs. 4 years), delay (5 s vs. 3 min), and media (photographs vs. drawings). Four-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds; children performed better with photographs than drawings; and there was no effect of delay. In Experiment 2, 3- and 4-year-olds used a delayed video image to locate a sticker on themselves (self task) or a stuffed animal (other task). The 2 tasks were positively correlated with age and vocabulary partialed out. Experiment 3 used a search task to assess whether children have particular difficulty using external representations that conflict with their expectations: 3- and 4-year-olds were informed of an object's location verbally or through video; on half of the trials, this information conflicted with children's initial belief. Three-year-olds performed worse than 4-year-olds on conflict trials, indicating that assessments of self and other understanding may reflect children's ability to reason about conflicting external representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depth perception in linear and inverse perspective pictures

The range of pictorial depth perception was tested with four pictures from the repertoire of European art, rather than the customary line drawings or photographs. These pictures included those rendered in linear perspective and inverse perspective, as well as those with different degrees of depth. Using Pandora' Box, the subjects were asked to place a lamp at the same apparent depth as objects in the pictures. The subjects did so without regard to the depiction technique. The results suggest that depth is seen in pictures both where the rules of linear perspective hold and where they have been violated.     

Face-ism: Five studies of sex differences in facial prominence.

Conducted 5 studies on relative facial prominence in depictions of men and women. This hypothesized sex difference may be theoretically important because visual representations presumably contribute to generic conceptions of what is unique about each of the sexes. Three studies assessed the prevalence of "face-ism"—greater facial prominence in depictions of men—in 3 contexts: in American periodicals (1,750 published photographs in 5 magazines and newspapers were analyzed), in publications from 11 cultures (3,500 photographs and pictures were coded), and in artwork over 6 centuries (920 portraits and self-portraits were scored). A 4th study found experimental evidence that this difference also occurs in amateur drawings of men and women; Ss were 40 male and 40 female undergraduates. A final study varied facial prominence experimentally in photographs and found consequent changes in rated intelligence and other characteristics; Ss were 60 university students. Implications for sex differences, particularly for the perceived intellectual qualities of women, are discussed. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Knowledge of the link between emotion and memory among normal and maladjusted boys.

In 4 experiments, 48 normal and 48 emotionally maladjusted boys in 2 age groups (7–8 and 10–11 yrs) were questioned about the link between emotion and memory, using facial drawings depicting emotional expressions. Ss in all 4 groups knew (a) that emotion gradually declines in intensity once the episode provoking the emotion is over, (b) that variation between people in the intensity of their emotional reaction to an episode will persist despite any decline in intensity over time, and (c) that an episode will be more or less memorable depending on whether or not it arouses emotion. The relative sophistication of Ss' knowledge about links between emotion and memory is contrasted with their ignorance regarding the voluntary control strategies that can be brought to bear on the display and experience of emotion. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expression des émotions dans le dessin d'un homme chez l'enfant de 5 à 11 ans.

This study examines the development of children's ability to express emotions in their human figure drawing. Sixty children of 5, 8, and 11 years were asked to draw "a man," and then a "sad", "happy," "angry" and "surprised" man. Expressivity of the drawings was assessed by means of two procedures: a limited choice and a free labelling procedure. Emotionally expressive drawings were then evaluated in terms of the number and the type of graphic cues that were used to express emotion. It was found that children are able to depict happiness and sadness at 8, anger and surprise at 11. With age, children use increasingly numerous and complex graphic cues for each emotion (i.e., facial expression, body position, and contextual cues). Graphic cues for facial expression (e.g., concave mouth, curved eyebrows, wide opened eyes) share strong similarities with specific "action units" described by Ekman and Friesen (1978) in their Facial Action Coding System. Children's ability to depict emotion in their human figure drawing is discussed in relation to perceptual, conceptual, and graphic abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The use and abuse of human figure drawings.

Reviews data-based studies on human figure drawings and concludes that there is little support for their validity or for their use as devices to assess personality, behavior, emotion, or intellectual functioning. Ease of administration and anecdotal reports of predictive accuracy are presented as explanations for their continued usage. Existing valid measures of behavioral and cognitive functioning render the use of human figure drawings superfluous. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Features of style classification: A multivariate experimental analysis of children's responses to drawings.

Investigated the sensitivity of 48 children (aged 6–11 yrs) to the formal or stylistic properties of line drawings. Particular emphasis was placed on a detailed analysis of Ss' classifications through the use of multidimensional scaling and multiple-regression analyses. Ss were asked to judge the similarity of 12 line drawings that were specially prepared to vary along 3 dimensions (thickness, amount of shading, and expressiveness), which were shown to be salient in 12 adults' discriminations. The scaling and regression analyses confirmed that the youngest Ss were able to make systematic stylistic comparisons utilizing the 3 dimensions of line variation contained in the drawings. The significance of this finding is discussed in relation to research on children's perception of multidimensional relations. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The expression of determination: Similarities between anger and approach-related positive affect.

In this set of studies, we examine the perceptual similarities between emotions that share either a valence or a motivational direction. Determination is a positive approach-related emotion, whereas anger is a negative approach-related emotion. Thus, determination and anger share a motivational direction but are opposite in valence. An implemental mind-set has previously been shown to produce high-approach-motivated positive affect. Thus, in Study 1, participants were asked to freely report the strongest emotion they experienced during an implemental mind-set. The most common emotion reported was determination. On the basis of this result, we compared the facial expression of determination with that of anger. In Study 2, naive judges were asked to identify photographs of facial expressions intended to express determination, along with photographs intended to express basic emotions (joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, neutral). Correct identifications of intended determination expressions were correlated with misidentifications of the expressions as anger but not with misidentifications as any other emotion. This suggests that determination, a high-approach-motivated positive affect, is perceived as similar to anger. In Study 3, naive judges quantified the intensity of joy, anger, and determination expressed in photographs. The intensity of perceived determination was directly correlated with the intensity of perceived anger (a high-approach-motivated negative affect) and was inversely correlated with the intensity of perceived joy (a low-approach-motivated positive affect). These results demonstrate perceptual similarity between emotions that share a motivational direction but differ in valence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Need for achievement in Negro and white children.

2 studies were done comparing the scores of Negro and white children on need for achievement (n Ach), defined as concern with achieving high standards of excellence. All Ss were from rural, central North Carolina. In the 1st study, 5th and 7th graders wrote stories in response to 6 line drawings of people. In the 2nd study, 3rd-, 5th-, and 7th-grade Ss and high-school Ss wrote or told stories to 12 other line drawings. In both studies, white Ss scored significantly higher than Negro Ss, and n Ach scores increased significantly with age. In the 2nd study, Negro girls scored significantly higher than Negro boys. Negro Ss had more hostile non-n-Ach themes in the 1st study, but there was no meaningful pattern of the non-n-Ach themes in the 2nd study. (21 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are edges sufficient for object recognition?

The authors argue that the concept of "edges" as used in current research on object recognition obscures the significant difficulties involved in interpreting stimulus information. Edges have sometimes been operationalized as line drawings, which can be an invalid and misleading practice. A new method for evaluating the utility of edge information, operationalized as the outputs of a local, signal-based edge extractor, is introduced. With 1-s exposures, the accuracy of identifying objects in the edge images was found to be less than half that with color photographs. Therefore, edges are far from being sufficient for object recognition. Alternative approaches to the problem of interpreting stimulus information are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When Children's Drawings Become Art: The Emergence of Aesthetic Production and Perception.

Although children's drawings have been studied from several perspectives, their status as works of art has not been considered. It is possible that only at a certain point in development do children's drawings begin to exhibit characteristics of the aesthetic. Proceeding from a definition of the aesthetic proposed by Nelson Goodman, a set of tasks was devised to examine this possibility. First-, fourth-, and sixth-grade children were tested for their sensitivity to the dimensions of syntactic repleteness (e.g., line variation) and expression (i.e., the feelings conveyed by a work). First-grade children displayed little capacity to produce or perceive aesthetic characteristics. Fourth-grade children displayed significant capacities to perceive these characteristics in drawings, and by the sixth grade children demonstrated considerable capacities to exhibit these aesthetic characteristics in their own drawings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of picture size and placement on memory for written words

A study investigating the effects of varying size and position of line drawings in combination with written words was conducted with kindergarten students. Subjects were shown written words under four conditions that represented various size and position relationships between line drawings and orthography. After 4 consecutive days of exposure in an incidental learning task, both identification and recognition measures were obtained. Results showed superior performance for word-only and enhanced-word conditions, over those in which small and large line drawings were paired with written words, supporting similar research findings conducted with reading tasks. Implications are drawn for application to individuals with little or no functional speech who use graphic symbols for expressive communication.     

Alcoholism and judgments of affective stimuli.

This study sought to differentiate alcoholism-related changes in judgments of emotional stimuli from those of other populations in which such changes have been documented. Two sets of visual stimuli, one containing words and the other containing drawings of faces (representing a range of emotional content), were presented to abstinent alcoholic adults with and without Korsakoff's syndrome, as well as to a healthy control group and four groups of patients with other neurobehavioral disorders: Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Participants rated the stimuli according to emotional valence and intensity of emotion. Results implicated bi-hemispheric frontal and subcortical involvement in the abnormalities of emotion identification associated with alcoholism, and they also support the notion of age-related vulnerabilities in conjunction with alcoholism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Observer biases in the 3D interpretation of line drawings

Line drawings produced by contours traced on a surface can produce a vivid impression of the surface shape. The stability of this perception is notable considering that the information provided by the surface contours is quite ambiguous. We have studied the stability of line drawing perception from psychophysical and computational standpoints. For a given family of simple line drawings, human observers could perceive the drawings as depicting either an elliptic (egg-shaped) or hyperbolic (saddle-shaped) smooth surface patch. Rotation of the image along the line of sight and change in aspect ratio of the line drawing could bias the observer toward either interpretation. The results were modeled by a simple Bayesian observer that computes the probability to choose either interpretation given the information in the image and prior preferences. The model's decision rule is noncommitting: for a given input image its responses are still probabilistic, reflecting variability in the modeled observers' judgements. A good fit to the data was obtained when three observer assumptions were introduced: a preference for convex surfaces, a preference for surface contours aligned with the principal lines of curvature, and a preference for a surface orientation consistent with an object viewed from above. We discuss how these assumptions might reflect regularities of the visual world.