Perception of depth in drawings : a developmental study of young Malawians

• Main Author: Ireson, Judith
• Published: University of Surrey 1981
• Subjects: 150; Psychology
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.258646

This dissertation reports a series of 9 experiments designed to investigate pictorial depth perception in Malawian children and young adults. It was found that familiarity of depicted material was a significant factor influencing subjects' interpretation of the spatial relationships in pictorial scenes and that both educated and uneducated children displayed an ability to interpret distance relationships in pictures having familiar content. In general, perception of pictorially depicted size and spatial relationships increased in accuracy with age, but spatial accuracy increased much more sharply than accuracy of size judgements, and was more strongly associated with subjects' educational background. Rather little differential sensitivity was displayed to individual depth cues aside from interposition, and it was proposed that this was because monocular cues were not salient in subjects' judgements of depth in three-dimensional scenes. In addition to familiarity, accuracy of size judgements was also influenced by the presence or absence of cues for flatness of the picture plane. The results are discussed in relation to other empirical studies and in terms of their significance for different theoretical approaches to pictorial depth perception. Consideration is also given to the implications of the findings for the use of black-and-white drawings as didactic tools, and for the development of training procedures to enhance pictorial depth perception.