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Review of Research in
Visual Arts Education
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eview of Research in Visual Arts Education
m \
Winter 1982
Editorial Consultants
Bette Acuff
Columbia University
Robin Alexander
University of Texas
Brian Allison
Leicester Polytechnic, G. B.
Kenneth R. Beittel
Pennsylvania State University
Ginny Brouch
Florida State University
F. Graeme Chalmers
University of British Columbia
Gilbert Clark
Indiana University
Robert D. Clements
University of Georgia
Vesta A. H. Daniel
Northern Illinois University
Michael Day
University of Minnesota
Helen Diemert
University of Calgary
Rex Dorethy
Ball State University
Arthur Efland
Ohio State University
Elliot W. Eisner
Stanford University
Martin Engel
National Institute of Education
Barbara Fredette
University of Pittsburgh
George Geahigan
Purdue University
Denise Hickey
Mackie College, Australia
Guy Hubbard
Indiana University
Beverly J. Jones
University of Oregon
Larry A. Kantner
University of Missouri-Columbia
Hilda P. Lewis
San Francisco State University
Douglas Marschalek
Miami University
H. James Marshall
University of Illinois
Clyde McGeary
Pennsylvania Department of Education
Harold McWhinnie
University of Maryland
Jerry W. Morris
Miami University
Ron Neperud
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ross A. Norris
Ohio State University
David A. Pariser
Concordia University
Phil E. Phillips
East Carolina University
Gordon Plummer
University of Cincinnati
Charles A. Qualley
University of Colorado
Max Rennels
Illinois State University
Eric E. Rump
University of Adelaide. Aus.
Jean C. Rush
University of Arizona
Elizabeth J. Sacca
Concordia University-Montreal. Can.
Richard Salome
Illinois State University
Robert J. Saunders
Connecticut Department of Education
Bernard Schwartz
University of Alberta, Can.
Maurice J. Sevigny
Bowling Green State University
Ralph A. Smith
University of Illinois
Mary Ann Stankiewicz
University of Maine at Orono
Martha Taunton
University of Iowa
Anne Taylor
University of New Mexico
James Victoria
Michigan State University
Brent Wilson
Pennsylvania State University
Marjorie Wilson
Pennsylvania Furnace
James Wright
Virginia Commonwealth University
Foster Wygant
University of Cincinnati
Michael Youngblood
Southern Illinois University
Marilyn Zurmuehlen
University of Iowa
Review of Research in Visual Arts Education
Proceedings of The National Symposium for
Research in Art
Learning in Art: Representation and Metaphor
Winter 1982
Number 15
Editors
Editorial Board
George W. Hardiman Theodore Zernich
School of Art and Design University of Illinois Champaign, Illinois
Laura H. Chapman
Cincinnati, Ohio
Dennis A. Dahl
University of Illinois
Edmund B. Feldman
University of Georgia
Howard Gardner
Harvard University
Jessie Lovano-Kerr
Indiana University
June King McFee
University of Oregon
Editorial Associates
Jane C. Maitland-Gholson
Alice Arnold
Birdie Cooper
Carol Fisher
Ahmad Hashim
Andra Johnson
Marilyn Munski
The Review of Research in Visual Arts Education is published twice yearly (fall and winter) by the Office of Con- tinuing Education and Public Service and the Department of Art and Design, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801. Subscriptions are $10.00 for one year; single issues are $6.00. Checks and money orders should be made pay- able to the University of Illinois. Pay- ment must be enclosed. Mail remit- tance to:
Editorial Office 143 Art and Design Building 4th St. and Peabody Drive University of Illinois Champaign, Illinois 61820
Second-class postage approved at Urbana, Illinois.
© Review of Research in Visual Arts Education, 1981
Contents
Articles
The Persistence of the Perpendicular Principle: Why, When and Where Inate Factors Determine the Nature of Drawings
Brent Wilson and Marjorie Wilson ... .1
The Case of the Disappearing Two-Eyed Profile: Or How Little Children Influence the Drawings of Little Children
Marjorie Wilson and Brent Wilson . . .19
Correspondence Between Implied Points of View and Selected Points of View in Children's Drawings of Familiar and Unfamiliar Objects James Victoria 33
Compositional Design as a Perceptual Determinant of Aesthetic Judgment
Calvin F. Nodine
Children's Comprehension of Photographic Representation
Harry Beilin
.43
55
Project Zero: The Evolution of Visual Arts Research During the Seventies
Jessie Lovano-Kerr and Jean Rush . .61
Response to Comment on Project Zero by Jessie Lovano- Kerr and Jean Rush
Howard Gardner 82
THE PERSISTENCE OF THE PERPENDICULAR PRINCIPLE: WHY, WHEN AND WHERE INNATE FACTORS DETERMINE THE NATURE OF DRAWINGS
Brent Wilson Marjorie Wilson
Introduction
We thought we saw a foolish cow
Standing on her head
We looked again and saw her
Perpendicular instead
"We wonder why," we were heard to cry,
"To this muddle she was led."
(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)
The aforementioned cow is only one of sixteen that cling tenaciously at right angles to a mountain path, re- gardless of whether the path slopes gently upward or plunges downward and turns at such extreme angles that our cow does appear to be hanging head down, while another adheres to the path's underside as a fly clings to a rafter. The path, the mountain, a dog, two people and the sixteen perpen- dicularly attached cows appear in a drawing reproduced in Henry Schaefer- Simmern's The Unfolding of Artistic Activity (1948). The drawing is one of a series by Miss "E," a 33-year-old woman whose perpendicular orienta- tion of objects to a baseline Schaefer- Simmern attributes to a stage of visual conceiving — the stage of the great- est contrast in direction of lines. He notes, however, that the illusion of dis- tance shown by the gradual diminu- tion in the size of the cows from the lower to the upper parts of the drawing is based upon the woman's "spontane- ous visual experience" (Schaefer-Sim- mern, 1948, pp. 131-141). Schaefer- Simmern expresses concern that there might seem to be an inconsistency be- tween the perpendicular-to-the-base- line orientation of the cows and their diminution in size, contradicting his assertion that "the unity of form is an
essential characteristic of any organi- cally developing process of visual con- figuration" (Schaefer-Simmern, 1948, p. 138). Something, it seems, was muddying Schaefer-Simmern's explan- atory waters. For Schaefer-Simmern and, we might add, for many others, "artistic unfolding" is entirely an in- nate and organic process — indeed it is believed that in order for the process to be properly achieved it should be — it must be — natural and unfettered. No piece of evidence, however incon- sistent, has been allowed to interfere with his beliefs.
The confusion of Schaefer-Simmern and others between what they wish to be the case and what is actually the case, leads to the systematic disregard for some aspects of graphic develop- ment and the exaggeration of others. If we are to understand graphic devel- opment it seems necessary to take a more rigorous and careful look at the full range of factors that affect this development. As the path to that under- standing we have chosen to begin with Miss "E's" curious gravity-defying per- pendicularly-oriented cows.
This investigation was supported in part by a grant from The Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies at The Pennsylvania State University.
The authors wish to recognize the assis- tance of Barbara Roberts in collecting the data, Ralph Raunft and Ken Bojrab in scor- ing the data and Jon Lemke in the statisti- cal analysis of the data. Additional unpublished graphic materials supporting this research are available from the editorial office of the Review of Research in Visual Arts Education.
Figure 1. "Taking the Cows Home from the Hill." Collected by Schaefer-Simmern.
Schaefer-Simmern reports that, sometime after drawing her upside- down cows, Miss "E" drew cows on horizontal baselines because, she wrote "no longer wishing to see the cows coming downhill at such awk- ward angles, I had to draw a serpentine pathway which gave me the opportu- nity of placing all the cows right-side- up" (Schaefer-Simmern, 1948, p. 139). We wish to raise the specific question "What led Miss E' to subject her cows to the laws of gravity rather than to those of innate graphic order?"; and from this specific question we will raise the whole issue of the interplay of nature and nurture in graphic de- velopment.
The Nature of Innate Theories of Graphic Development
Nearly all theories of drawing develop- ment are predicated on the single as- sumption that the unfolding of graphic achievement is determined by the child's stage-by-stage application of a series of innate factors or rules.
These factors have not been set down in one place or integrated into one comprehensive theory; rather they have been identified singly or in small clusters by psychologists, art educa- tors and others interested in artistic development. Among the rules are: (1) keep shapes undifferentiated and simple for as long as possible while still achieving graphic goals (Arn- heim, 1974, p. 181); (2) achieve the greatest possible contrast of lines, often through a horizontal/vertical orientation (Schaefer-Simmern, 1948, pp. 11-21); (3) orient objects in a per- pendicular fashion to the nearest base- line (Piaget and Inhelder, 1956, pp. 375-417); (4) end-anchor and attach limbs to the largest mass (Freeman, 1975); (5) depict conceived as well as perceived information (Luquet, 1913, 1927); and (6) avoid overlap and pro- vide each object with its own space (Goodnow, 1977, pp. 40-46). It is inter- esting to note in passing that most art educators writing on children's art have been content to describe the characteristics of age-based develop-
B. Wilson, M. Wilson
mental stages, but they have generally eschewed the explanatory power af- forded by the innate rules.
Although explanations of graphic development arising from these and other innate rules and factors have not been extended to their logical conclusions, we might expect that ex- tensions in which development pro- ceeds from a lower to a higher level would take one or more of the follow- ing forms: (1) innate factors have struc- tures ranging from simple to complex through which the child moves in se- quence; (2) a more advanced form of some innate factor replaces a more basic form of innate factor; (3) one innate factor is replaced by an entirely different factor; or (4) the range of application of a rule is increasingly more restricted, i.e., the rule is applied less and less generally. Each of these explanations assumes the graphic learner's growing cognitive ability to handle increasing complexity and his increasing ability to note discrepan- cies between that which has been drawn and that which has been per- ceived in the phenomenal world. Once noted, these discrepancies presumably trigger in the individual the desire to reduce the discrepancy by inventing a new graphic equivalent for the phe- nomenal perception. This, in turn, de- mands a different or higher level appli- cation of one or more innate graphic factors. This would seem to be the the- oretical concept implicit in Schaefer- Simmern's formulation. Although he recognizes that phenomenal percep- tions alter the nature of drawings and presumably also affect the application of innate factors, this point seems not to have been fully acknowledged nor its implications investigated. Much the same might be said for the work of Lowenfeld (1963) as he sees the child moving from the scribbling stages through dawning realism and the pseudo-realistic stage. Luquet (1913 and 1927) too, divided development
into stages including those of: intel- lectual realism where the younger child applies internal graphic factors in or- der to draw what he knows about things and visual realism where the older child draws or at least attempts to draw things as they appear to him in the phenomenal world. In these and other explanations of graphic development it is not clear what happens to the in- nate factors with the onset of visual realism or pseudo-realism. Are the innate factors gradually but finally re- placed by non-innate graphic factors? Or do the innate rules continue to exist in some diminished role as they be- come submerged or overridden by new governing factors? It seems that the strong theoretical reliance on the pri- mary and pervasive role of the innate rules in graphic development has im- peded the investigation of factors other than the innate which might determine the nature of graphic development. In this paper we propose to (1) investi- gate the nature of both the innate and non-innate principles that affect graphic development, (2) to investi- gate the nature of the interaction be- tween these two types of principles, and (3) to investigate the conditions under which one or the other of the principles dominate.
The Study
Miss "E" drew the path for her cows. We provided a hill for our subjects — one with a slope of 40 degrees on either side. Subjects were asked to draw a figure walking one-half way up one side of the hill and another walk- ing one-half way down the other. We observed the means by which subjects of different ages oriented their fig- ures to the baseline. These observa- tions, we assumed, would provide the basis for insights into whether sub- jects' productions were governed by an innate factor or by some other.
Perpendicular Principle: Inate Factors
The Subjects
Statistical Analysis
Four hundred and sixty-five subjects participated in the study. The subjects were divided into four groups: the first group of 112 subjects consisted of two five-year-olds, 83 six-year-olds and 34 seven-year-olds; the second group of 123 subjects consisted of 85 eight- year-olds, 30 nine-year-olds and eight ten-year-olds; the third group of 82 subjects consisted of four eleven-year- olds, 15 twelve-year-olds, 19 thirteen- year-olds and 44 fourteen-year-olds; and the fourth group consisted of 148 young adults ranging in age from 18 to 36. Approximately one-half of the sub- jects in each of the four groups came from the East Central region of the United States and the other half from the Southeastern region of the United States.
Scoring
The angle of both up-hill and down- hill figures in each drawing was ana- lyzed in relation to the angle of the hill on which it was placed and to the page itself by (1) measuring the num- ber of degrees by which a figure departed from the vertical (a figure parallel to the side of the page and per- pendicular to the bottom of the page or baseline was scored as zero degrees, while a figure that was perpendicular to the slope of the hill was scored as 40 degrees); by (2) indicating whether the figures were (a) stick, (b) shown front-view, profile, or mixed profile and front-view, (c) whether the legs were straight or bent and (d) whether the legs were of different lengths; and by (3) classifying whether (a) two feet were on the surface of the hill, (b) only one foot was on the surface, (c) two feet were off the surface of the hill, (d) one foot was below the surface of the hill, (e) and whether two feet were below the surface of the hill.
From simple plots of the angle of the figures in relationship to the other variables, it became immediately clear that the use of measures of central tendency such as mean and median would provide either few or distorted views about the governing role of the innate perpendicular factor and the non-innate vertical factor. In fact not only were the measures of central ten- dency seen to have little value but tests used to compare them would be inappropriate since the distributions were found to (1) be skewed to the left (both unimodally and bimodally) where the vertical factor governed, (2) skewed to the right (both unimodally and bi- modally) where the perpendicular fac- tor governed, (3) symmetrical where a tension between the perpendicular and the vertical factors were heaviest and (4) symmetrical but bimodal where both the perpendicular and vertical factors governed equally. Since the variances of the distributions were found to be unequal, it became neces- sary, in order to discuss the governing role of the perpendicular and vertical factors, to view the proportion of sub- jects that were governed by the per- pendicular and vertical factors as well as those subject to the tension be- tween them. Thus subjects who ori- ented figures between -10 to 10 de- grees of being perpendicular to the base of the hill were considered to be governed by the vertical factor; sub- jects who oriented figures 11 to 29 de- grees from the vertical were consid- ered to be in the region of tension; and subjects who oriented figures be- tween 30 to 50 degrees from the verti- cal were considered to be governed by the perpendicular factor. Subjects orienting figures beyond these regions were considered outliers and were ex- cluded from further analysis because of the strong distorting influence they would have had on the measures.
B. Wilson, M. Wilson
It was necessary to use two separate analyses, one for the figure walking uphill and another for the downhill figure because the distributions of the two angles of orientation were dis- tinctly different (there were, for exam- ple, more bimodal occurrences for downhill figures). Indeed the two tasks were somewhat unrelated, as the data show. For example, it would not be possible to predict the type of surface contact for the downhill figure on the basis of the surface contact of the up- hill figure, nor were differences in leg length predictable from downhill to uphill figures.
In an initial analysis the variables (1) stick figure, (2) front, profile and mixed views, and (3) the sex of the subject were found to be independent of all other variables or conditionally independent of angle and were there- fore eliminated from further analysis. Instances in which either two feet, or only one foot broke the surface of the hill or disappeared behind the hill were infrequent and were pooled into one larger category of breaking-the- surface. Thus the initial 4032 cross- classifications were reduced to 192.
Finally, although the tables were still sparse the displays of age x bent- legs x leg-length x surface contact showed that the huge majority of sparse cells occurred when the legs were bent. The bent-leg variable had a very complex interaction structure with the other variables. By condition- ing the variable on bent legs it was found that figure-orientation angle was completely independent of all other variables. This separate analysis of bent legs had important theoretical implications that will be discussed later.
The analyses, then, were made to estimate the extent to which the per- pendicular and vertical factors and the tension between them governed in relation to the age of the subject, the angle of figure orientation, whether legs were bent or lengthened and the
nature of the contact with the surface of the hill.
Findings
Two major sets of findings will be pre- sented. The first contains estimates of the number of individuals to be influ- enced by the perpendicular factor when the legs of figures are not bent, the second contains estimates of the influence when legs are bent.
Analysis of the Figure-Baseline Ori- entation When Legs Are Not Bent. Through the application of log-linear models to the cross classified data it was found that the response variable an gle-of-figu re-orientation interacted simultaneously with the variable of legs-of-different-lengths, the various types of contact with the baseline of the hill, and with the age of the sub- ject. The appropriate log-linear model fit to the data, then, contains the struc- tural third-order interaction of age, leg length and surface contact; the sec- ond-order interaction of the angle-of- orientation with leg length and surface contact; and the first-order interaction of the response angle with age. Tables 1 and 2 present the maximum likeli- hood estimates for the proportions that fall into the perpendicular, verti- cal and tension angle groupings for each of the 32 cross-classifications.
In order to indicate as simply as possible just what these tables show we shall illustrate the data by present- ing examples of features of the up- and down-the-hill drawings.
Floating Leg. When subjects de- picted one foot on the hill and the other floating freely (Figure 2) there was more likelihood that the figure would be in the vertical or tension re- gions than in the perpendicular region for both uphill and downhill figures. In other words, although the govern- ing power of the perpendicular was present especially for the downhill figures, the one-foot-on-one-foot-off solution seemed to be quite a useful
Perpendicular Principle: Inate Factors
TABLE 1
Estimates of the Maximum Likelihood That Uphill Figures With Unbent Legs
Will Be Oriented in the Vertical, Tension and Perpendicular Regions
|
Percentage |
|||||
|
Surface |
Leg Length |
Group |
Vertical |
Tension |
Perpendicular |
|
One Foot |
Legs Same |
One |
43.88 |
41.27 |
14.85 |
|
Off Surface |
Length |
Two |
46.69 |
42.40 |
10.91 |
|
Three |
41.73 |
37.93 |
20.33 |
||
|
Four |
61.73 |
27.00 |
11.27 |
||
|
Legs Dif- |
One |
42.49 |
30.86 |
26.65 |
|
|
ferent |
Two |
46.84 |
32.87 |
20.29 |
|
|
Lengths |
Three |
38.38 |
26.93 |
34.69* |
|
|
Four |
59.64 |
20.16 |
20.20 |
||
|
Two Feet |
Legs Same |
One |
30.25 |
40.52 |
29.23 |
|
Off Surface |
Length |
Two |
33.78 |
43.69 |
22.53 |
|
Three |
27.12 |
35.12 |
37.76 |
||
|
Four |
46.60 |
29.08 |
24.32 |
||
|
Legs Dif- |
One |
41.34 |
31.49 |
27.17 |
|
|
ferent |
Two |
45.67 |
33.60 |
20.73 |
|
|
Lengths |
Three |
32.27 |
27.40 |
35.33* |
|
|
Four |
58.50 |
20.75 |
20.75 |
||
|
Foot Breaks |
Legs Same |
One |
41.32 |
35.80 |
22.88 |
|
Surface |
Length |
Two |
45.06 |
37.71 |
17.23 |
|
Three |
37.95 |
31.76 |
30.29 |
||
|
Four |
58.74 |
23.71 |
17.56 |
||
|
Legs Dif- |
One |
49.22 |
23.32 |
27.46* |
|
|
ferent |
Two |
54.25 |
24.84 |
20.91 |
|
|
Lengths |
Three |
44.22 |
20.24 |
35.55* |
|
|
Four |
65.70 |
14.51 |
19.79 |
||
|
Two Feet |
Legs Same |
One |
9.36 |
46.73 |
43.91 |
|
on Surface |
Length |
Two |
11.04 |
53.22 |
35.75 |
|
Three |
7.95 |
38.33 |
53.72 |
||
|
Four |
17.07 |
39.70 |
43.23 |
||
|
Legs Dif- |
One |
54.68 |
37.77 |
7.54 |
|
|
ferent |
Two |
56.74 |
37.86 |
5.41 |
|
|
Lengths |
Three |
53.59 |
35.76 |
10.65 |
|
|
Four |
71.62 |
23.04 |
5.33 |
* Bimodal distributions; higher percentage in the distribution is italicized.
means for orienting figures toward the vertical. It is also important to note that three of the four distribu- tions for downhill figures are bimodal, indicating that there was a tendency for subjects to be influenced either by the vertical or the perpendicular for the downhill application of this vari- able. It appears then that the subjects had implicitly determined which polar extreme would govern their figure ori-
entation, thus reducing the use of the tension area between the poles.
The depiction of legs of differing lengths with one foot off the surface would appear to increase the likeli- hood of subjects' achieving a vertical figure orientation, yet the estimated proportions are very much like those for one-foot-off with legs of the same length. Perhaps the orientation was established and the leg lengthened
B. Wilson, M. Wilson
TABLE 2
Estimates of the Maximum Likelihood That Downhill Figures With Unbent Legs
Will Be Oriented in the Vertical, Tension and Perpendicular Regions
|
Percentage |
|||||
|
Surface |
Leg Length |
Group |
Vertical |
Tension |
Perpendicular |
|
One Foot |
Legs Same |
One |
46.48 |
26.09 |
27.47* |
|
Off Surface |
Length |
Two |
30.52 |
32.46 |
37.01 |
|
Three |
47.18 |
17.38 |
35.44* |
||
|
Four |
61.00 |
11.51 |
27.49* |
||
|
Legs Dif- |
One |
39.13 |
29.76 |
31.12* |
|
|
ferent |
Two |
24.57 |
35.37 |
40.05 |
|
|
Lengths |
Three |
39.86 |
19.88 |
40.26* |
|
|
Four |
53.77 |
13.73 |
32.56* |
||
|
Two Feet |
Legs Same |
One |
34.39 |
35.14 |
30.47 |
|
Off Surface |
Length |
Two |
21.05 |
40.72 |
38.23 |
|
Three |
35.78 |
23.96 |
40.25* |
||
|
Four |
49.52 |
17.04 |
33.44* |
||
|
Legs Dif- |
One |
36.55 |
56.74 |
6.71 |
|
|
ferent |
Two |
23.17 |
68.09 |
8.73 |
|
|
Lengths |
Three |
44.42 |
45.22 |
10.37 |
|
|
Four |
60.16 |
31.40 |
8.44 |
||
|
Foot Breaks |
Legs Same |
One |
31.28 |
43.91 |
24.82 |
|
Surface |
Length |
Two |
18.92 |
50.30 |
30.78 |
|
Three |
34.15 |
31.44 |
34.42* |
||
|
Four |
48.16 |
22.73 |
29.11 |
||
|
Legs Dif- |
One |
57.57 |
34.61 |
7.82 |
|
|
ferent |
Two |
41.40 |
47.09 |
11.51 |
|
|
Lengths |
Three |
63.84 |
25.16 |
11.00 |
|
|
Four |
76.60 |
15.48 |
7.92 |
||
|
Two Feet |
Legs Same |
One |
6.24 |
31.67 |
62.10 |
|
on Surface |
Length |
Two |
3.22 |
30.99 |
65.79 |
|
Three |
5.89 |
19.62 |
74.49 |
||
|
Four |
9.71 |
16.59 |
73.70 |
||
|
Legs Dif- |
One |
39.30 |
38.69 |
22.01 |
|
|
ferent |
Two |
24.93 |
46.45 |
28.62 |
|
|
Lengths |
Three |
42.43 |
27.39 |
30.18* |
|
|
Four |
56.89 |
18.83 |
24.28* |
* Bimodal distributions; higher percentage in the distribution is italicized.
merely to fill available space. For up- hill figures the vertical factor governs in all four groups. For downhill figures the estimates are split, with the per- pendicular factor governing most fre- quently for two groups and the vertical for two groups. This time four of the eight distributions are bimodal. Again these bimodal distributions point to the possibility that subjects were governed by one or the other of the extreme fac-
tors, diminishing the attraction to the other pole and thus diminishing the occurrence of responses within the ten- sion region.
Floating Figures. As with subjects who depicted figures with one-leg- touching and one-leg-off the hill, sub- jects who drew figures floating freely above the hill were more likely to be influenced by the vertical than the per- pendicular factor. In the 16 distribu-
Perpendicular Principle: Inate Factors
Figure 2. Floating Leg — Legs of the Same Length.
Figure 3. Floating Leg — Legs of Differing Lengths.
tions, the vertical factor governed seven times. Seven times the tension region predominated; in only two in- stances did the perpendicular factor govern. Indeed it was our informal ob- servation that the more highly the fig- ures floated above the hill the more likelihood there was that the figures would have a vertical orientation. Con- versely, as floating figures were drawn closer to the baseline of the hill, it was almost as if a powerful magnet pulled them toward the perpendicular. For floating figures, only three of the 16 distributions are bimodal. For uphill figures five of the eight distribu- tions are skewed to the left, favoring the vertical region, while for downhill,
five of the eight distributions favor the tension region. For downhill floating figures with legs of different lengths there was a less than ten percent chance that the figures would be gov- erned by the perpendicular factor.
Figures Breaking the Surface. The depiction of the legs as breaking or going behind the surface was also an effective means by which subjects were able to achieve a more vertical figure orientation. All eight of the uphill dis- tributions are strongly skewed to the left, favoring the vertical region, al- though it should be noted that three of the eight distributions are bimodal (where the legs were of different lengths). Four of the eight distribu-
8 B. Wilson, M. Wilson
Figure 4. Floating Figures — Legs of the Same and Differing Lengths.
Figure 5. Figures Breaking the Surface.
tions for downhill figures are also skewed to the left, favoring the verti- cal; but only one of the eight distribu- tions is bimodal. It is also worth noting that if, in downhill figures, the legs broke the surface and were of differ- ent lengths, there was only about a ten percent possibility that the orientation would be governed by the perpendicu- lar factor.
Figures with Two Feet on the Sur- face. It is only when two legs of the same length are anchored to the sur- face of the hill that the full governing effect of the perpendicular factor is to be seen. Under such conditions for both up and downhill figures, 57% of the responses for the four age groups fall into the perpendicular region, while only 9% of the responses fall
Perpendicular Principle: Inate Factors
Figure 6. Both Feet on the Surface — Legs of the Same and Differing Lengths.
into the vertical region. These figures nearly reverse themselves when the legs are of differing lengths; 50% of the responses fall into the vertical range and only 17% fall into the per-
pendicular range. In other words, when the responses fell into the perpendicu- lar region they were more likely to have been achieved by anchoring two legs of the same length to the baseline of the hill than by any other means.
Analysis of Figure-Baseline Orien- tation When Legs Are Bent. The bent- leg variable displayed a strong rela- tionship to the variable age. Tables 3 and 4 show this relationship. In the first two age groups bent legs were virtually non-existent. Approximately 29% of the third age group and 51% of the oldest group depicted bent legs.
As indicated earlier, an examination of the data also revealed the need to analyze the bent-leg variable sepa- rately from the not-bent variables. By pooling the age groups and by condi-
Figure 7. Figures with Bent Legs.
10
B. Wilson, M. Wilson
TABLE 3
The Relationship Between Age and
the Drawing of Uphill Figures
With Bent Legs
|
AGE GROUP 1 2 3 |
4 |
|
|
Unbent Legs (No.) |
111 119 56 |
67 |
|
Bent Legs (No.) |
1 4 26 |
81 |
TABLE 4
The Relationship Between Age and
the Drawing of Downhill Figures
With Bent Legs
|
1 |
AGE GROUP 2 3 |
4 |
||
|
Unbent Legs (No.) |
112 |
119 |
61 |
79 |
|
Bent Legs (No.) |
0 |
4 |
21 |
69 |
tioning on bent-legs it was found that angle of figure orientation was com- pletely independent of all other vari- ables. Table 5 shows the maximum like- lihood estimates obtained for figure orientations in each of the three re- gions. Both distributions are strongly skewed to the left, indicating that bend- ing legs was a highly effective means for orienting figures in the vertical region.
In order to compare figure orienta- tions when legs are bent and not bent, Tables 6 and 7 (Summary Tables for Not-Bent) are presented. Comparisons of Tables 5, 6 and 7 show the strong relationship of the use of bent legs to a vertical figure orientation as com- pared to any of the non-bent variables
— approximately 20% more for both up- and down-hill figures.
An examination of the summary tables also reveals these facts:
(1) When the percentages for all groups were averaged for figure ori- entation in either the perpendicular or tension regions, it was found that over 60% of all subjects were influ- enced by the perpendicular factor.
(2) The perpendicular factor is more likely to govern for downhill than for uphill figures, perhaps indicating that regardless of the means employed — whether bent or non-bent leg treat- ments and surface treatments — the downhill figure presented the more difficult task. (3) The perpendicular factor governed the second age group more strongly than it did the first age group (as indicated by the downhill data where 36% of the first age group oriented their figures in the vertical region while only 23% of the second age group did so). In other words, under certain conditions the govern- ing power of the perpendicular factor actually becomes stronger with age before that power is finally diminished.
Now, what do all those data mean? What do they have to do with Miss "E's" cows, with innate and non-in- nate principles and with graphic development?
Theoretical Projections
We now wish to use these data in order to examine the origins and na- ture of the interactions of the factors associated with the orientation of fig-
TABLE 5
Estimates of the Maximum Likelihood That Figures With Bent Legs Will Be
Oriented in the Vertical, Tension and Perpendicular Region
Vertical
Percentage Tension
Perpendicular
Uphill Pooled Groups Downhill Pooled Groups
62.39 58.70
26.61 17.39
11.01 23.91
Perpendicular Principle: Inate Factors 11
TABLE 6
Summary of Maximum Estimates of Percentages of Uphill Unbent Figures That
Will Be Oriented in the Vertical, Tension and Perpendicular Regions
Group
Vertical
Tension
Perpendicular
39.07 42.51 35.40 54.95
35.97 38.27 31.68 24.74
24.96 19.22 32.29 20.31
TOTAL
42.98
32.67
24.20
TABLE 7
Summary of Maximum Estimates of Percentages of Unbent Downhill Figures
That Will be Oriented in the Vertical, Tension and Perpendicular Regions
Group
Vertical
Region Tension
Perpendicular
36.37 23.47 39.19 53.09
38.20 43.93 26.26 18.41
26.57 32.59 34.55* 29.62
TOTAL
38.03
31.70
30.83
* Bimodal distribution; the highest percentage is italicized in each distribution.
ures in the up-and-down-the-hill task. In other words, what might these data mean when used in the generation of hypotheses about graphic production?
Our first and most essential asser- tion is that in each graphic configura- tion there are two potent principles — the innate and the influence. Briefly, the innate principle governs such things as basic simplicity and composi- tional order — the manner in which the parts of configurations are related spa- tially. The influence principle governs differentiation and the stylistic aspects of configurations. Each principle is multifaceted, comprised of various fac- tors; but before a closer examination, it is important to discuss the theoreti- cal implications of postulating two graphic principles rather than one.
Although those who explain graphic development by innate principle alone have not been greatly concerned about how the innate principle functions with older children, with adults (Schaefer- Simmern is perhaps the exception) and
especially not with adult artists. Yet, whether the innate principle dimin- ishes in power, is somehow gradually but totally replaced, or continues to influence in some weakened or dimin- ished state seems a most central ques- tion. This question is important be- cause "child art" is not an end state (Day, 1979, p. 11) but a route through which one travels toward some higher or at least some different graphic end. A full map of that route is the key, of course, to the understanding of graphic development and, by exten- sion, to the understanding of artistic development. Following only innate "routes" leaves us far short of our destination.
Projecting two co-existing govern- ing factors eliminates the knotty and perhaps even unsolvable problems of establishing when the influence prin- ciple begins and determining the even- tual fate of the once singular and all powerful innate principle. With the positing of the two principles an ex-
12 B. Wilson, M. Wilson
plication of the nature of each seems the next order of business, followed by an examination of the relative in- fluence of each principle at anytime during development, an exploration of the interplay among factors within each of these two general principles and finally and most importantly, an investigation of the interactions be- tween the two general governing prin- ciples. We wish now to examine the nature of the innate and the influence principles as we think they functioned in the up-and-down-the-hill task and then explore some of the interactions between them.
As we examine these two principles it is important to note that they should be considered to be mental phenom- ena. The interaction between them occurs as a cognitive operation. In other words graphic configurations are behavioral manifestations of cog- nitive operations. As such, these con- figurations might contain isolated fea- tures that may be pointed to as pure or as nearly pure instances of the in- nate, and others, of the influence. At the very beginning of graphic devel- opment it is possible for a configura- tion to appear to manifest only innate factors. This fact notwithstanding, most configurations manifest at least traces of each.
Even when the configurations do not manifest the fetures of either the in- nate or influence principles, the two factors are functioning, but either the influence has not developed suffi- ciently to produce behavioral evidence or, in the case of the highly skilled artist, the innate factors have been vir- tually overridden. (We might add par- enthetically that, depending on con- ditions, a highly skilled artist may produce images that are strongly in- fluenced by the innate. We once watched an artist, prominent enough to have exhibited in the Venice Bien- nale, resort to drawing tadpole figures in order to quickly illustrate a point that he was making.) As we now be-
gin discussing features found in the up-and-down-the-hill drawings, it is important to remember that these are isolated manifestations of one or the other of the principles. The images as a whole display both.
The innate principles in the up-and- down-the-hill task. When subjects ori- ented their figures in the perpendicu- lar and tension regions, they were following, to a greater or lesser degree, the innate predisposition to order ob- jects at right angles to the nearest baseline (Piaget and Inhelder, 1956, pp. 375-417) in order to achieve the maximum horizontal/vertical contrast of lines and shapes (Schaefer-Sim- mern, 1948). When legs of figures were not bent, subjects were keeping shapes undifferentiated while still achieving their graphic goals (Arn- heim, 1974, p. 181). In an overwhelm- ing number of the responses, the figures were drawn walking on the baseline of the hill rather than be- hind the ridge line or on the implied plane of the hill. This on-the-baseline response seems to be conditioned by an innate factor — the desire to avoid overlap or to provide each object with its own space (Goodnow, 1977, pp. 40- 46) even if it is only a figure overlap- ping a part of the hill. There seems also to be a strong innate prohibition against crossing the baseline of the hill, thus affecting those subjects who may have been inclined to place fig- ures on the plane of the hill. Placing part of the figure behind the baseline of the hill would also have prevented subjects from showing a maximum amount of information about a figure or from drawing what they knew to be present in such situations (Freeman and Janikoun, 1972). One other impor- tant point should be made about the use of the baseline: the youngest group were far less apt to anchor legs to the ridge of the hill than any of the other groups. They floated figures above the hill and occasionally sank them into the plane of the hill. There
Perpendicular Principle: Inate Factors 13
are at least two possible explanations for the "floating" and "sunken" fig- ures of the first group. The first is that some five-, six- and seven-year-olds might have wished to place the figures on the baseline, but they simply did not have enough skill to accurately anchor them — they were poor marks- men. The second possibility is that they simply had no innate propensity to use the ridge baseline. If this were the case then some other principle would seem to be in effect, stated as: "when showing relationships of ob- jects, it is sufficient to place them on the same page." We discount the sec- ond possibility since it seems highly unlikely that innate factors come and go. It seems much more probable that the anchor-to-the-baseline rule was in effect but that some children did not yet have the graphic skill to provide behavioral evidence of the effect, or that they were applying the factor in some, as yet, unknown manner.
One of the most important observa- tions to be made about the data is that the innate factors were strongest when they joined forces. When subjects used the baseline, kept legs unbent, at- tempted to show a maximum amount of information and avoided overlap- ping, their figures were far more likely to fall into the perpendicular region.
One of the most curious phenomena to be noted, however, was the manner in which subjects used one or more innate factors to overcome another in- nate factor. When subjects moved their figures into the tension or vertical regions, they often did so either by lengthening one leg to fill the extra space created, or to "push" the figure toward the vertical. In instances where one foot of an unbent leg was an- chored to the baseline and the other was left suspended in space over the hill so that the figure might be ori- ented more vertically, we have the op- portunity to observe the acceptance of one gravity-defying improbability — walking on air — in order to avoid
another — the perpendicularly-ori- ented figure.
Thus we have seen that the various innate factors sometimes joined forces, leading subjects to produce figures in the perpendicular region. At other times innate principles were used in order to enable subjects to orient fig- ures toward the vertical.
The influence principle in the up- and-down-the-hill task. Whereas pre- vious inquiry into graphic develop- ment has made easy the identification of the innate factors, that same inquiry makes difficult our task of identifying influence factors. The primary reason for the difficulty is that in most innatist accounts of graphic development the influence factors are assumed to be higher order manifestations of innate principles. However, three dimensions of what might be considered the influ- ence principle have been posited (Wil- lats, 1979). Although Willats eventually attempts to refute the role of all three dimensions, he does characterize a view of graphic development in which the child draws from his knowledge of "stereotypes." He presents three possible sources for these "stereo- types," each of which involves some aspect of imitation. One possibility is that the child discovers "stereotypes" or schemata in his chance scribbles. Later, more complex schemata are dis- covered in random or less controlled aspects of already mastered schemata. The second is that the child bases "stereotypes" on perceptual sensa- tions; in other words, the child at- tempts to produce a graphic equiva- lent of what has been perceived in the phenomenal world. Willats claims that both of these assumptions are present in Luquet's theory (pp. 14-15). The third possibility, according to Willats, is that they are learned either by "asso- ciation from the pictorial environment" — copying from other pictures — or as the result of explicit teaching," "let me show you how to draw a cube" (p. 15). Gardner (1980), too, argues that
14 B. Wilson, M. Wilson
graphic models play a role in develop- ment. He states in his chapter "To Copy or Not," We have seen that for individuals in our society the achievement of accurate representational skills is at a premium during the years of schooling. Copying presents itself as an obvious means for attaining such skill, and we can expect youngsters to gravitate toward it with or without support from others in their society (p. 191).
Perhaps even the strongest case that might currently be made to support evidence of the early age at which the influence factors emerge, the extent and the power with which they exert themselves is in our paper on the two- eyed profile (Wilson and Wilson, 1980). In the figures in the up-and-down- the-hill drawings, however, the precise nature of the influence principle is more difficult to discern than when one detects an instance of rather direct modeling. Obviously, present day in- fluences may be seen in the general style of the drawings, e.g., there were no two-eyed profiles. But does the in- fluence principle manifest itself in any other way? We think that any move to orient figures to the vertical is the result of the influence principle. Here is our argument. If the desire to use the most simple configuration possible while still achieving a graphic goal is among the most basic innate factors (Arnheim, 1974, pp. 174-182) then any movement away from the simplest con- figuration used to present an object is, we think, the result of the influence principle. In other words, when a three- year-old child draws an unadorned cir- cle and proclaims it to be a person, we might assume that we are observing the most basic instance of the child's "satisfactory" symbolic presentation of a person. If subsequently, the child looks at an actual person or at a draw- ing of a person by another, notices two eyes and then thinks "oh, my person needs eyes, too," then the influence factor has come into play. Of course
the "simplicity-principle" is still in ef- fect, i.e., the person does not yet have a body, arms or legs. When they do appear it will be a result of the influ- ence factor. In the same way, an in- visible "influence cable" pulls the up- and-down-the-hill figures toward a vertical orientation.
And now in respect to the influence principle, what might we be able to claim about the figures with the bent legs — the feature that we assume to be most highly related to the influence principle so far as the orientation of the figure toward the vertical is con- cerned? (We are, of course, observing one influence factor, bent legs, being employed to achieve another influence factor, a depiction of the effect of grav- ity on figures.) It is obviously not pos- sible from the data to conclude whether or not the "bent" feature resulted from direct observation of people walking or from memories of other graphic models of figures with bent knees.
We have written extensively about the fact that graphic images appear to be more influential than perceptions of the phenomenal world in providing models for drawings (Wilson and Wil- son, 1977, 1979). The reasoning behind our conclusion is this: graphic images are much more like other graphic images than they are like objects in the phenomenal world. Thus the in- venting of a graphic equivalent for an actual object may be more time-con- suming and more difficult than merely borrowing directly from another static, simplified, schematic graphic image. This borrowing may occasionally re- sult from direct copying or as is more frequently the case, may be based on a memory of a previously experienced graphic image. In other words, graphic images seem easier to remember than phenomenal world perceptions.
We think that a further resolution of the nature of the interplay between the phenomenal perception and graphic model aspects of the influence factor are essential to the understanding of
Perpendicular Principle: Inate Factors 15
graphic development. Furthermore, we think that experiments can be de- signed that will reveal the relative ef- fect of graphic models such as those on (1) direct phenomenal-perceptual observations, (2) memories of phenom- enal perceptions, (3) memories of graphic perceptions, (4) direct graphic rule teaching and (5) teaching based on kinetic perceptions of one's own body.
Interactions of the Innate and the Influence Principle
Each up-and-down-the-hill figure con- tained manifestations of both the in- fluence and the innate principles. Sometimes these principles functioned in unison to achieve particular graphic ends — legs were lengthened to fill space created by a vertically oriented figure. At other times, even when bent legs contained a high degree of differ- entiation, the invisible power of the innate principle still pulled figures into the tension and occasionally into the perpendicular orientation regions. Sim- ilarly, the producers of figures with influence-derived bent legs avoided overlap of either hill or figure by plac- ing figures on top of the hill baseline rather than in the hill plane. Just as the drawings of the oldest subjects con- tained numerous innate mainfesta- tions, the drawings of the youngest subjects contained influence factors, but these influence factors affected the configurations or shapes of the figures far more than they affected the manner in which the figures were oriented to the hill. Among the oldest subjects the innate factors still per- sisted although sometimes weakened in their governing power. In no way could it be claimed that one principle was the exclusive possession of a par- ticular age group.
Lest there be a misunderstanding that we ascribe more value to one prin- ciple than the other — that the mani- festations of the influence principle
are more highly prized than the innate, or that those of the innate are of a lower order — may we now state that this is not the case. Among the most powerful graphic statements, for example, were drawings of figures with straight legs, although they might not give the pre- cise appearance of walking up a hill. It is only in relation to personal and graphic goals that the question of which is the more desirable or prefer- able governing principle may be an- swered.
In a culture such as ours that prizes a high degree of graphic visual realism (Gardner, 1980, p. 191), the continued primary reliance of individuals on in- nate factors for ordering spatial rela- tionships in drawings arrests graphic development far short of the implicit cultural graphic goals, or in fact short of an individual graphic goal. Remem- ber that Miss "E" was dissatisfied with her cows coming down the hill at such "odd angles." Graphic development, we think, is essentially a matter of learning to override with influence fac- tors those innate factors that conflict with current cultural graphic norms and personal graphic desires. Without at least some overriding of the innate, development simply does not occur. There is no culture in which the innate and the influence are isomorphic; and, of course, we must also consider the situations such as children's use of the two-eyed profile (Wilson and Wilson, 1980) in which there was a widespread modeling from what is now a rarely occurring spontaneous innate mani- festation. In other words, innate fea- tures are as readily modeled as pre- dominanty cultural ones.
We think that the innate principles remain for a lifetime, and they have a continued potential to affect graphic production although, in some cases, they are almost entirely overridden. Artists, for example, who have fully assimilated linear perspective and foreshortening conventions in their drawings and paintings, might still
16 B. Wilson, M. Wilson
manifest the effects of innate prin- ciples in areas that are not as fully conventionalized, such as pictorial composition. (If we look carefully we might see these innate manifestations in Rembrandt just as readily as we see influence manifestations in the draw- ings of young children.) Attention to the interactions between the innate and influence factors and the inter- actions among individual innate and influence principles affords a totally new means of theorizing about graphic development. This new theoretical po- sition would free us from the severe limitations of the age-based-innate-fac- tor-only formulations that are neither able to account for an autistic 31/2- year-old girl's being able to draw like a skilled adult (Selfe, 1977) nor for the normal elderly woman who draws like a child of three (Wilson and Wilson, 1977, p. 7). A new interactionist theory would even provide explanations for why a single drawing sometimes con- tains characteristics from three or four of, say, Lowenfeld's developmental stages.
We think that further attempts at viewing graphic development as chil- dren's acquisition of increasingly more complex and powerful innate rules that depend only on discoveries from the phenomenal world or from inventions, but not from modeling-after will yield inadequate one-sided explanations. Adequate theorizing involves account- ing for and integrating all relevant vari- ables.
Proceeding on the premise that graphic configurations result from interactions between the spatial/order- ing innate principle and the stylistic/ contour influence principle, we pose the following hypotheses: (1) When a series of innate factors interact with one another in a given graphic task, the governing power of the innate prin- ciple will be the strongest; (2) when, in an individual's graphic configura- tion, an innate factor governs one or
more aspects, the innate factor will continue to govern until overridden by an influence factor relating to the same aspect or aspects; (3) when one or more innate factors supersede another innate factor, there is less necessity to employ influence factors to over- ride the innate factors; (4) the influ- ence factors most easily acquired are those that do not interfere or conflict with innate ordering principles; (5) in- nate-like features are just as readily modeled as more purely influence-re- lated features.
We have attempted to characterize graphic development as a process in which, at any one point, a number of factors might come into play, as op- posed to the traditional view that it is simply an organic process. In order to effect a single graphic configura- tion, it is possible to suppose the inter- play of a complex series of innate fac- tors interacting among themselves, as well as a group of influence variables interacting both among themselves and in tandem with or in tension to the innate factors. Often, the results of such a marriage are curious and amusing; but curious and amusing as were Miss "E's" cows and our up-and- down-the-hill figures, they nonetheless point to a new way to theorize about drawing development.
References
Arnheim, R. Art and visual perception: a psychology of the creative eye, the new version. Berkeley & Los Angeles: Univer- sity of California Press, 1974.
Day, M. Child art, school art and the real world of art. In M. Dobbs (Ed.) Art educa- tion and back to basics. Reston, Va.: Na- tional Art Education Association, 1979.
Freeman, N. H. How young children try to plan drawings. In G. Butterworth (Ed.) The child's representation of the world. New York: Plenum Press, 1977.
Freeman, N. H. and Janikoun, R. Intellectual realism in children's drawings of a fa- miliar object with distinctive features. Child Development, 1972, 43, 1116-1121.
Perpendicular Principle: Inate Factors 17
Gardner, H. Artful scribbles: the significance of children's drawings. N.Y.: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1980.
Goodnow, J. Children drawing. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977.
Luquet, G. H. Les dessin enfantin. Paris: Alcan, 1927.
Lowenfeld, V. Creative and mental growth, 3rd Ed. New York: The Macmillan Com- pany, 1963.
Piaget, J. and Inhelder, B. The child's con- ception of space (Trans. F. J. Langdon and J. L. Lunzer) London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956.
Selfe, L. Nadia: a case of extraordinary draw- ing ability in an autistic child. New York: Academic Press, 1977.
Schaefer-Simmern, H. The unfolding of ar- tistic activity: its basis, processes and implications. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1948.
Willats, J. Implicit rules: some of the truth about children's drawings. Presentations
on art education research: perception, cognition and representation I. Montreal: Concordia University, 1979.
Wilson, B. and Wilson, M. An iconoclastic view of the imagery sources in the draw- ings of young people. Art Education, Janu- ary 1977, 30,5-12.
Wilson, M. and Wilson, B. The case of the disappearing two-eyed profile: or how little children influence the drawings of little children. Proceeding of National Symposium for Research in Art, 1980.
Brent Wilson
School of Visual Arts Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania 16802
Marjorie Wilson
Pennsylvania Furnace, Pennsylvania 16865
B. Wilson, M. Wilson
THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING TWO-EYED PROFILE: OR HOW LITTLE CHILDREN INFLUENCE THE DRAWINGS OF LITTLE CHILDREN
Marjorie Wilson Brent Wilson
As I was going up the stair I saw a man who wasn't there He wasn't there again today - I wish, I wish he'd stay away
Hughes Mearns
When Hughes Mearns wrote that qua- train, the "man" to whom we devote this paper was more than likely still there; and, although he ceases to exist, we are still apt to encounter him. In each edition of Lowenfeld's Crea- tive and Mental Growth, from the first edition, published in 1947, to the sixth, some twenty-eight years later, in 1975, there appears in a child's drawing, the same figure of a "man." His head is clearly turned to present a profile view and yet he possesses two eyes with which he stares at us from the pages of the book (1975, figure 96, p. 201). We smile at the image but dismiss it as yet another instance of the drawing child's seeming insistence on present- ing "all" that is known of an object — the same phenomenon that produces, simultaneously, interior and exterior views of a house or both legs of a rider astride a horse seen in profile. And didn't Picasso, as well, present us with the paradigmatic model for the two-eyed profile?
The young "artist" was identified by Lowenfeld (1939) as D.H., one of the "weak-sighted children" with whom he had worked in Vienna. Sub- sequent information in The Nature of Creative Activity tells us that the drawings were made in 1936 when D.H. was eleven years old. Lowenfeld ac- counts for the appearance of the fig- ure by noting that ". . . as characteristic in the representation of the face that it develops from the frontal drawing,
with dots for eyes, a vertical line for nose, a horizontal one for mouth, via a mixed form containing the nose at the side, to the profile proper" (p. 27). He attributed the "mixed front view and profile" including "both eyes and the nose" to the fact that all were of equal significance to the child (1947, p. 43). By 1975, Brittain has modified a good deal of the Lowenfeld text; yet he not only retains D.H.'s two-eyed profile, but he continues to account for the appearance of the mixed view "that includes a representation of two eyes and a profile nose" (p. 187) as though it continued to exist; but how many of us who are regularly con- fronted with drawings produced by children have seen the two-eyed pro- file in the course of the past forty- five years or so? Who or what is this spectral man? We know that he once existed, and that he existed in a multi- tude of forms. In the same way that the early global and tadpole configura- tions cover a wide spectrum, the many manifestations of the two-eyed profile range from the merest near-global rep- resentation to a well-developed model, complete with body, arms and legs.
In "true anthropological" manner we have shown that the two-eyed profile once inhabited the earth. Because of the dearth of information regarding the drawings of children before the late 19th century, however, we have been unable to trace the beginnings of this phenomenon, although research
Additional unpublished graphic materials supporting this research are available from the editorial office of the Review of Research in Visual Arts Education.
19
Figure 1. "Searching for the lost pencil" D.H., age 11. Collected by Lowenfeld, 1936, Vienna. Collection of The Pennsylvania State University.
attests to a profusion of these speci- mens as early as 1882.
The recorded history begins with a study by the Italian Corrado Ricci, dated 1887. Ricci has recounted the story of his serendipitous discovery of children's drawings on a portico wall in 1882, and the way in which he was inspired to make a study of the drawings of young children. About the early figure drawings, he states that "before a man can become entire he must pass through many stages, and they are not prompted to jump at once from this primitive form to complete physical integrity." The stages to which Ricci refers include the sideways move- ment of the figure from front-view to profile following "the little one's own laws," described in this way:
A man should stand as it pleases him, in profile or full face, and there is no reason for curtailing him; seen from just one side or the other, he will al- ways be a man with two arms and two eyes.
Ricci found, in a study of 1250 draw- ings that when children drew the pro- file, seventy times out of a hundred, they continued to include the two eyes of the full face.
Five years later, in 1892, Earl Barnes, who had also conducted a study of children's drawings, found that Ricci's earlier study had reached conclusions very like his own. Barnes, too, noted the two-eyed profile to be "the general law." He collated 12,740 faces from pictures drawn by children from six to thirteen years old. He found that
20 M. Wilson, B. Wilson
Figure 2. Collected by Thorndike, circa. 1913, U.S.A.
"At six years, twice as many full-faces were drawn as profiles. From six to thirteen, full-faces decreased, and pro- files increased, and, at thirteen, there were twice as many profiles as full- faces. The number drawn of each was equal to a point between nine and ten years old."
In 1902, Lena Partridge studied the human figure in the drawings of En- glish children. Partridge's study is one of the most rigorous, replete with nu- merous tables and figures through which she was able to chart the de- velopment of the human figure. She observed, as had Ricci and Barnes, that the full-face man is gradually turned into a profile man as the child grows older. She made the additional observation that, as the child advances in age, there is a tendency to "turn cer- tain limbs and features to the right" during the stage occurring between the representation of the full-face fig-
ure and the profile, a treatment she described as "mixed." The pecentages in her chart for the "mixed treatment of heads" reveal that "until eight years of age, more than half the attempts at profile are really drawn in this con- fused manner." At the age of eight the percentage of two-eyed profiles was calculated to be 30%. Partridge made a supplementary study in which she determined that the presence of a model and the position in which the children saw that model had little in- fluence on the drawings of children under the age of eleven. Of the hun- dred girls in the study, 23 drew . . . the mixed view, "a strange form," she notes, "that could not have been seen from any point of view."
Meanwhile, studies in other coun- tries substantiated not only the exis- tence of the two-eyed profile but the great proliferation of these curious creatures — not unlike the insidious
Two-Eyed Profile: Influence 21
oi
Figure 3. Collected by Kerschensteiner, circa. 1905, Germany.
Schmoo (a creation of Al Capp that bred in great multitudes) — whose amorphous shape they sometimes as- sume.
Of the 67 drawings mainly by five- and six-year-old English children used to illustrate the chapter in his book dealing with children as "draughts- men," Sully (1903) showed 36 two- eyed profiles. It seems to be no acci- dent that a full 54% of the characters that he presents are of this type. Of them he notes:
The first clear indication of an attempt to give the profile aspect of the face is the introduction of the angular line of the side-view of the nose into the contour. The little observer is soon im- pressed by the characteristic well- marked outline of the nose in profile; and as he cannot make much of the front view of the organ, he naturally begins at an early stage, certainly by the fifth year, to vary the scheme of the lunar circle, broken at most by the ears, by a projection answering to a profile nose.
22
M. Wilson, B. Wilson
10
Figure 4. Gradual turning of the figure to the right, Partridge, circa. 1902, England.
Two-Eyed Profile: Influence 23
and again describes: the mixed scheme, in which the eyes and mouth retain their front-view as- pect (p. 357).
In Germany in 1905, Levinstein re- ported, Young children usually draw the face in a full front view, but at the age of four, 4 percent of them introduce some profile, some heads being drawn with some features, especially the nose, both in profile and in front. At seven, 34 per- cent show transition stages.
In the same year, working in Munich, Kerschensteiner presented his own study including some of the most idio- syncratic two-eyed profiles we have found, as the common representation of a man (1905).
In Belgium, Rouma (1912) sought to trace the evolution of the representa- tion of the man in children's drawings, and to compare his own findings with those presented by Lena Partridge. In this extensive study, Rouma described in detail the diverse aspects observed in the development of the human fig- ure in individual drawings. "Le Profil de Transition," in which the drawings appear part full-face and part profile, is designated as a stage in that devel- opment. The sixteen figures and heads appearing under this caption include figures with two noses — one profile, one front-view, as well as a profile head with two eyes, one atop the other (pp. 50, 51). To the various explana- tions for the existence of the two-eyed profile — that it is the characteristic view (Lark-Horovitz et al.); that the child cannot draw the front-view nose (Sully); that the child has a natural tendency to turn the figure (Partridge) — Rouma hypothesized that it was the prominence of the nose itself that was fascinating to the child, a feature he had seen exploited in their humorous drawings. Rouma's detailed descrip- tions also revealed another significant detail; before the child includes the nose as a protrusion in the contour of the face, he noted that the nose is
attached to the left side, drawn either as a small circle or as two lines at an acute angle, just as we observed in some of Sully's specimens.
Luquet's familiar work categorizes the stages of development in children's drawing to include at age six and seven what he called intellectual realism. Among the characteristics of this stage, Luquet numbered what he noted as a contradiction or as a change in point of view included in the same drawing — a feature translatable to the two- eyed profile — and leaving no doubt of that fact when he suggests that an indicator of the transition to the stage beyond may be the child's restriction to including only one eye in a profile contour.
The two-eyed profile appears, also, as step .31/2a on the 1923 revision of Thorndike's 1913 Scale for General Merit of Children's Drawings.
It becomes obvious, then, from this mounting body of evidence, that the two-eyed profile appeared, to these early researchers, to have been an in- nate phenomenon. Indeed, it would seem that, along with the ubiquitous scribble and tadpole person, the child is applying a universal innate principle of graphic development. The data in studies such as Ricci's and Barnes' and Partridge's show a pervasive fre- quency of the two-eyed profile; and the careful charting of the develop- ment of a schema for "man" shows the systematic sideways movement of the figure — even, as documented by Par- tridge, to the right — a regularity that persisted through Lowenfeld's Vienna studies well into the thirties. But where is the two-eyed profile today, and where, in fact, is its matured counter- part, the profile proper?
We begin to note the decline and fall of the two-eyed profile in Table 1.
Table 1 illustrates the surprisingly high incidence of profiles and two- eyed profiles in Western Europe, En- gland and the United States between the years 1883 and 1905, the sharp de-
24 M. Wilson, B. Wilson
TABLE 1 The Decline of the Two-Eyed Profile"
|
Source & Country |
Year |
Age |
% Profile |
% Two- Eyed Profile |
|
Ricci; Italy |
c 1883-86 |
6-8 |
70" |
|
|
Barnes; U.S. |
1892 |
9 |
50 |
|
|
Sully; England |
C1895 |
5-7 |
85 |
54 |
|
Partridge; England |
C1902 |
8 |
76 |
30 |
|
Levinstein; Germany |
C1905 |
7 |
34 |
|
|
Goodenough; U.S. |
C1923 |
7.5 to 9.5 |
48 |
5 |
|
Harris; U.S. |
1953 |
8 |
28 |
0 |
* These data are interpolations, drawn from the researchers various ways of sampling and reporting. The chart provides general trends but should not be used for precise comparisons. The Goodenough and the Harris data are more accurate; they were tabulated by the authors from national standardization samples of figure drawings from the Goodenough and Harris Draw-A-Man Tests. ** 70% of all profile heads were reported to have two eyes forward.
dine in the United States by 1923, and the complete disappearance of the two-eyed profile by 1953. It is reason- able to assume that the disappearance probably occurred in the United States some time before 1953; it is also pos- sible that the sharp decline may not have occurred as early in the European countries as in the United States. We have not located data to provide evi- dence of this, one way or the other.
We should note, as well, that the incidence of the representation of the profile itself appears to be diminish- ing along with its two-eyed counter- part from 85% in 1895 steadily down to a mere 28% in 1953.
The two-eyed profile seems to have completely disappeared, and yet, is it not curious that, in spite of these facts, in Brittain's 1975 distillation of Lowenfeld, D.H.'s anachronistic man persists in his search for his pencil? Similarly, in 1973, Lark-Horovitz, Lewis and Luca assume the continued exis- tence of the two-eyed profile. Return- ing to Ricci's 1887 study, they main- tain that "the schema of the human face, and its development, has a logic
of structure and growth which is as clear in drawings from the last century as in those of the present time, and in this part of the world as in another" (pp. 50, 51). We say that this is simply not so, and in spite of assertions to the contrary, we fail to find, either in the Lowenfeld/Brittain illustrations or in those of Lark-Horovitz et al. another incidence of the two-eyed profile. We might add that in our recent examina- tion of thousands of children's figure drawings from Jordan, Egypt, Australia and New Guinea, we have not found a single two-eyed profile; and despite Kellogg's (1969) meticulous analysis, classification and cataloguing of every particular in the drawings of young children, our examination of 8000 or so of these drawings on microfiche failed to reveal a trace of our evanes- cent friend.
In Claire Golomb's (1974) study of the drawing and modeling in pla-do of three hundred children between the ages of two and seven in the United States and Israel, the profile is given only passing mention. She states that there is some consideration given by
Two-Eyed Profile: Influence 25
the children to the drawing of profiles (p. 119), but if the profile was at- tempted by any of the subjects it seems not to have merited illustration. Good- now includes some profile figures in Children Drawing (1977), but they gen- erally appear as the running figures of older children, which action is easier depicted in a profile view. The turning of the body sideways, however, is noted by Goodnow as either a varia- tion or a small change in a "formula," but nowhere in this recent work is there a two-eyed profile to be seen. "The little man who wasn't there" is simply not there!
We have come to the important question: What is the meaning of this mysterious disappearance? If the child had, indeed, been following innate rules, how could the two-eyed profile have gone away?
If innate rules become altered, modi- fied or dissipated over time, why is it that some seem to have done so and others to have persisted?
Does the disintegration of this fac- tual thread in the carefully constructed fabric of belief about the child's graphic development mean that the entire cloth is likely to unravel?
If the explanation given for the exis- tence of the two-eyed profile by Lark- Horovitz et al. (1973) — that the pro- file nose as well as the frontal eyes are drawn by the child because it is the most characteristic view — is taken as true, why is it that the child no longer includes, in the general repertoire of her developing graphic schema, the pro- file with either one or two eyes?
If, as Lowenfeld claimed, the child includes both the profile nose and frontal eyes because all are of equal significance to the child, could they have now become less significant?
If, as Partridge theorized, children have a natural tendency to turn the figure sideways, why now has it be- come (according to Goodnow) merely a "variation" in a "formula"?
If, as Sully supposed, the child draws
the profile nose because of the diffi- culty of drawing the nose front-view, has the child become more proficient or the task less difficult?
If, on the other hand, the two-eyed profile could be interpreted as a ran- dom spontaneous occurrence, how does this explain the high percentages of occurrence in 1887 and would not the two-eyed profile occur today in drawings of humans with some fre- quency?
All of this leads us to two further questions: Of what, then, was the two- eyed profile a result? Where did it come from and why has it disap- peared?
The coming and going of the two- eyed profile would seem to have some profound implications for theories of graphic development.
The first conclusion we must come to is that the two-eyed profile is not merely an innate factor, as Barnes and the rest would have it. If, as we have shown, the two-eyed profile existed in such astounding numbers in West- ern Europe, England and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it has now disappeared, then we must conclude that we are seeing the result of some factor other than the innate — an influence factor that was operative at first and later ceased to function.
It is important at this point to specu- late about what the conditions for the proliferation, the subsequent minimi- zation and eventual demise of the two- eyed profile might have been.
As we have already noted, the data that might have disclosed the begin- nings of the two-eyed profile have been buried in the past. Although we do not know of its precise origins, there are a few possibilities worth noting:
The contradictions referred to by Luquet as "rabattement" which appear in the stage of intellectual realism in the child's graphic development, do, in fact, occur spontaneously in the
26 M. Wilson, B. Wilson
drawings of children in the form of aerial views, transparencies and other such phenomena. We see, too, the depiction of a cart or vehicle in a splayed view, displaying four wheels, two on top and two on the bottom, as related to the two-eyed profile; while the two-eyed profile, itself, appears frequently in the child's depiction of fish and animals that are traditionally shown in a profile view. One such de- piction appears among Heidi's many renditions of a horse (Fein, 1976, p. 29). In addition, although appearing infrequently as does the two-eyed pro- file as we have described it, the mixed profile of today, e.g., head and body front; legs profile, is a similar manifes- tation. (Even these anomalies however, show some evidence of becoming less frequent in the drawings of media-in- fluenced boys.)
What may we infer from these spon- taneous occurrences? Earlier we ad- vanced the question that, if the two- eyed profile could be interpreted as a random spontaneous occurrence, then how might we account for the high in- cidence of two-eyed profiles in 1887 and for the absence of occurrence in drawings of humans at the present time. Here we will attempt to answer that question.
Wilson and Wilson have earlier (1977) made the assertion that the drawings of children are affected by influences of the culture, of objects in the phenomenal world (1980) but primarily and most importantly that the drawings of children are influenced by the drawings of children. Given the fact of the spontaneous occurrence of the two-eyed profile, might we not assume that the two-eyed profile that was so prevalent in the early part of the century was a result of a spontane- ously occurring phenomenon, appear- ing in the work of some children, that was passed on to other children? Even so, could such an influence alone ac- count for the extensive appearance of the two-eyed profile in Western Eu-
rope, England and the United States? Certainly inquiry into the functioning of the spontaneous occurrence of the two-eyed profile in the drawings of some children today would reveal little or not influence on the drawings of other children. In fact, given no re- inforcement and in the presence of a multitude of options, these oddities seem simply to remain with the origi- nator, who plays with them for awhile and then moves on to other images. But this was surely not always the case; even such insidious imports as the Japanese beetle and the Russian flu would cease to flourish if the fertile conditions for their survival did not prevail. Let us, then, speculate as to what the fertile conditions for the pro- liferation of the two-eyed profile might have been. Before we do, however, we would like to contemplate one aspect of the suggestibility or model-ability of certain images. How, for example, it happens that we see certain motifs re- peated over and over again as we study children's drawings, e.g., the rectangu- lar house with triangular roof and per- pendicularly-oriented chimney, with or without curling smoke. We do not con- sider the appearance of the house and other such configurations to signal a separate stage in the child's innate graphic development, as the appear- ance of the two-eyed profile was thought to do, and yet, both images would seem to have been innately de- rived, that is, derived through the ap- plication of innate rules. We will show in another paper, however (Wilson and Wilson, 1980), the persistence of prin- ciples that are known to be innate even in the presence of factors that strongly influence images otherwise, as found in the drawings of children and adults alike. It is the interplay of the innate and the influence factors that we be- lieve to have been operating in the enduring life of the two-eyed profile and that those things that are closest to the innate, such as the spontane- ously-occurring two-eyed profile are
Two-Eyed Profile: Influence 27
most readily, easily and naturally mod- eled from one child to another. In conjunction with the essential pre- disposition of the two-eyed profile to be modeled, then, we need to examine the circumstances that might account for the escalation of the two-eyed pro- file to the position of so powerful and dominant a model.
First we need to consider the state of children's art about 100 years ago:
The concept of child art is one of our own making, an invention that occurred at the end of the 19th cen- tury. Before that time child art as we know it did not exist. There would have been little drawing and little encouragement to draw in the home. The drawing done in schools was de- scribed as highly structured: the thought of that day was that "the ma- terial best suited for originating art instincts consists of the dislocated parts of conventional designs and the typical geometrical forms . . ." (Burk, 1902, p. 323). Spontaneous drawing was surely not fostered, but Ricci him- self supplied evidence of its presence in 1882. His discovery of the drawings of children on a remote portico wall bespoke a sort of 19th century graffiti, described, in the case of the older children, as "hardly what could be considered chaste . . . inspired by an extremely crude realism'' and leaving little doubt that spontaneous drawing did exist. We might note, also, that Franz Cizek, the so-called father of child art, was observing at almost the same time — Vienna in 1885 — young boys making drawings with chalk on a wooden fence, at times even fighting over the ownership of the space (Viola, 1936, p. 12) — the now famous inci- dent that led to his discovery of child art. In search of truly spontaneous drawings, Luquet, in fact, made copies of children's drawings he had found on walls in disparate locations in France in the early part of the century, drawings that he labelled graffiti, and giving some hint of the prevalence of
the pre-twentieth century practice of drawing on walls. And what did chil- dren draw on walls and elsewhere? Luquet shows the human figure. The studies of Ricci and Barnes, of Sully and Rouma and the rest attest to the fact that the figure played a large part in the early drawings of children. An 1895 (Maitland, cited in Burk, 1902) study shows a marked preference by children, when drawing "to please themselves," for drawing the human figure over animals, plants and houses. The decline in interest in drawing the human figure and the preference for still life and geometric design after the age of eleven demonstrated in those same tables, indicates what we know to be the case — that "after the age of eight or nine, it seems that the difficulty of representing begins to be really appreciated and there is less confidence and satisfaction in the work" (report to N.E.A., O'Shea, 1894). Where, then, could children learn to satisfactorily represent the human fig- ure? To whom did they turn? We might assume a situation of this kind:
We have all been told of the scarcity of paper in the early part of the century. With this commodity in such short sup- ply there was certainly not the oppor- tunity for the child to spend innumer- able hours engaged in the practice and perfection of imperfect schemata that we are able to witness with the cheap and abundant resources avail- able today in the form of notebook paper, long computer print-out sheets and even, as Gardner describes, galley proofs (1980, p. 100). And even if such paper had been available for these pur- suits, there would have been few mod- els. We can assume that adults were exerting little or no influence on chil- dren's drawings; furthermore, media models in the way of periodicals, pic- ture books or Sunday comics were meager. Kerschensteiner's study pro- vides us with some interesting data in this regard. In addition to other facts that he felt to be of some signifi-
28
M. Wilson, B. Wilson
Figure 5. Luquet's drawings of figures found on walls. Early twentieth century, France.
cance such as sex, age, and school grade of each of his subjects, Ker- schensteiner carefully made note of whether or not the child had bilder- buch or picture books in the home. We have been led to wonder whether, by presenting this information as he did, he might have been, consciously or unconsciously, reflecting a view of the way in which picture books may have influenced children's drawing. An ex- amination of these data shows that 70% of the children who drew two- eyed profiles had no picture books, while only 34% of the others were reported to have been without picture- books.
Faced with the paucity of adult mod- els, the children drawing on walls and fences would have found their models in the drawings with which they were most familiar and which were avail- able to them. Ricci described his por- tico wall as displaying the drawings of the older children in a higher position while the works of the "youngest ar- tists" appeared "lowest down on the wall." We may assume that the younger children modeled their drawings on those higher up on the wall, those of the older children. Cizek's Austrian Tom Sawyers, too, would have in- cluded older and younger children drawing together on the fence. We find that in some of our research with
the graphic dialogue, when adults draw on the same page with children as well as when children draw with other children, there is a good deal of emulating taking place, so much so, that, at times, it becomes difficult to separate one set of drawings from an- other. Children, then, would appear to have been mainly influenced by other children, the younger by the older, the older by their peers, lead- ing to greater and greater degrees of homogeneity until the drawings would have become highly homogeneous, this homogeneity bringing about the proliferation of such spontaneously- occurring images as the two-eyed pro- file. '
If this explanation does, indeed, ac- count for the appearance of the two- eyed profile, then how can we account for the fact that, by the 1920s its ap- pearance had diminished until it has now totally disappeared? Where has it gone? We need to note one other important fact. Each of the researchers we have mentioned had concluded, as had Dale Harris (1963) much later in the century, that the two-eyed profile preceded and was the result of a failed attempt to draw — the profile. There- fore, the profile proper appears to have exerted a great deal of influence and to have been modeled by the child as the most characteristic view — from
Two-Eyed Profile: Influence 29
other art sources? from popular 19th century media? we do not know for sure — but surely the greater the in- cidence of the profile, the greater the incidence of the two-eyed profile.
If, then, the original problem that we set for ourselves, What caused the mysterious disappearance of the two- eyed profile? can be answered by pre- suming that the disappearance of the two-eyed profile coincided with the disappearance (or at least the decline) (Table 1) of the profile, then we need to ask, as well, What ever happened to the profile? Assuming, as we have, that cultural conditions — the lack of op- portunity and encouragement to make spontaneous drawings, the rigid art lessons taught in schools, the lack of easily available materials and the pro- liferation of profile models — led to the birth of the two-eyed profile, then, surely cultural conditions would have led to its demise as well. A first step would be to chronicle the decline of the profile model as the most charac- teristic view. If, in the 1840's, Godey's Ladies stood alone, clad decorously in their lavish bonnets, gazing primly only to the right or very nearly so, the end of the century and the advent of new printing technology supplied them with a good deal of company. With the rise of illustration in the popular media, and following in the tradition of Chari- vari, founded in Paris in 1838; Punch, in London in 1841; Le Rire in Paris and The Yellow Book in London in 1894; Simplicissimus in Germany, each featuring cartoons by such notables as Daumier, John Tenniel, Toulouse- Lautrec, Aubrey Beardsley, Rowland- son and George Grosz, the early 1900's in America saw the appearance of the daily comic strip (Robinson, 1974).
Not unlike the child of today, who, Hulk-like, flexes his muscles, makes growling noises and dreams of making off with his mother's green food color- ing, and the Superman-inspired child of the 40's who, arrayed with nothing but chutzpah and a bedsheet for a
cape, made more than one calamatous jump from the roof, the child of 1903 and 1904 was presented with all man- ner of models to emulate. And the first and most popular strips featured kids, outrageous kids — The Yellow Kid, The Katzenjammer Kids, Buster Brown and Little Nemo — a glorious pastiche of fantasy and pranks and non- sense to capture any child's fancy and to satisfy his wildest dreams. The fore- runner of the movie cartoon, these kids were always in a state of anima- tion; they ran, jumped, swam, flew and somersaulted daily through their vari- ous adventures, and one could not say of them, as of earlier static illustra- tions, that there was one character- istic view. Like the compelling image of the two-eyed profile before him, the cartoon kid appealed to the graphic spirit of the child. He was presented with clarity, simplicity and charm; he was humorous and outrageous and appealing, and many were not terribly far removed from the graphic forms of which the child was already capable. Today we have in this genre Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Kids love them; they are easy to reproduce even by those with limited means, and although art teachers abhor them, there is no question that they are infinitely model- able — as was Henry and Popeye and The Yellow Kid.
What is truly amazing is the absolute power of images such as these. It would seem to us that if anything is to be learned from the meteoric rise and fall of the two-eyed profile, it is that, in order to realize an adequate theory of graphic development, we will need to pay attention to both of the factors that appear to be operating in that sphere — the innate and the influence. How do these two factors function in the developmental scheme vis-a-vis the two-eyed profile? We will offer these three hypotheses: 1) When adult influence is less extensive, then child influence will be greater. These child in- fluences, which are highly depen-
30
M. Wilson, B. Wilson
dent on the innate factor, are generally narrower. 2) When the child influence is greatest, options are fewest; thus there is the greatest homogeneity of figures in drawings. 3) When adult in- fluence is greater, more options result from the number of models available, leading to greater variability in chil- dren's drawings — and less modeling of the innately derived images.
What may we conclude from all of this? What does it mean? Why attach any importance to the meteoric rise and fall of so seemingly insignificant a figure?
Conclusion
Since Ricci's early discovery of the drawings of children, it has been the popular view that children's drawings are the same throughout the world; all children everywhere initially draw upon the same natural, creative and generative resources for their images. In charting the mysterious disappear- ance of the two-eyed profile, we hope, once and for all, to have dispensed with the idea that little children are graphic virgins.
The two-eyed profile was perhaps the most striking anomaly to study. How- ever, we could as easily have studied the rise and fall of such features, in the drawings of the children of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen- turies, as ladder mouths, the two- cheeked smile mouth, the astonishing range of parentheses eyes, the profile head very nearly filled with one heavily- lashed front-view eye, the crossed arms transparency, the arms from the neck phenomenon, the garden-rake hands, the urn-shaped, milk-bottle-shaped, Christmas-tree-ornament-shaped bodies and on and on. None of these appear today with any more frequency than does the two-eyed profile.
We might speculate that, one hun- dred years from now, a group of in- vestigators into the origins of chil- dren's drawings will smile about green
creatures with bulging biceps and caped men who appear to fly through the air; and they will see yet another influence in operation. Even more im- portantly, at a time when it seems to be acceptable in some quarters to claim that older children are influ- enced in their quest for graphic real- ism (Gardner, 1980), we wish to place the influence factor at the very genesis of childhood graphic form — with the four-year-olds and the three-year-olds and perhaps even earlier — to say that any theory of graphic development must surely account for the effects of influence from the beginning. The very appearance of the two-eyed profile in the drawings of the youngest children provides evidence of the early exis- tence of this influence. But in what form do these factors exist, and how do they function in the larger develop- mental scheme? Let us answer these questions in another paper. . . .
References
Barnes, E. A study on children's drawings. The Pedagogical Seminary, 1892, II, 455- 466.
Burk, F. The genetic versus the logical order in drawing. The Pedagogical Seminary, 1902, 9, 296-323.
Fein, S. Heidi's horse. Pleasant Hill, CA: Exelrod Press, 1976.
Gardner, H. Artful scribbles: the signifi- cance of children's drawings. N.Y.: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1980.
Golomb, C. Young children's sculpture and drawing: a study in representational de- velopment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974.
Goodnow, J. Children drawing. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977.
Harris, D. B. Children's drawings as mea- sures of intellectual maturity. N.Y.: Har- court, Brace and World, Inc., 1963.
Kellogg, R. Analyzing children's art. Palo Alto, California: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1969.
Kerschensteiner, D. G. Die entwickelung der zeichnerischen begabung. Munich: Ger- ber, 1905.
Lark-Horovitz, B., Lewis, H. and Luca, M. Understanding children's art for better
Two-Eyed Profile: Influence 31
teaching, 2nd Ed. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Books, Inc., 1973.
Levinstein, Von S. Kinderzeichnunger bis zum 14 lebensjahr. Leipzig: Voigtlander, 1905.
Lowenfeld, V. Creative and mental growth. N.Y.: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1947.
Lowenfeld, V. The nature of creative activ- ity. N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1939.
Lowenfeld, V., and Brittain, W. L. Creative and mental growth, 6th Ed. N.Y.: Macmil- lan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975.
Luquet, G. H. L'Evolution du dessin enfantin. Bull. Soc. Binet, 1929.
Mearns, H. Creative power: the education of youth in the creative arts. 2nd Revised Ed. N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1958.
O'Shea, M. V. A study of drawings of chil- dren in the schools of Winnona, Minn., by children from five to seventeen years. Pro- ceedings of the National Education Asso- ciation, 1894, 1015-1023.
Partridge, L. Children's drawings of men and women. Studies in Education. Ed. Earl Barnes, July 1, 1902.
Ricci, C. L'arfe dei bambini. Bologna: 1887 (Translated by Maitland in Pedagogical Seminary, 1894, 3).
Robinson, J. The comics. N.Y.: G. P. Put- nam's Sons, 1974.
Rouma, G. Le langage graphique de I'enfant. Bruxelles: Misch et Thron, 1912.
Sully. Studies of childhood. (Revised Ed.) New York: D. Appleton, 1903.
Thorndike, E. L. The measurement of achievement in drawing. Teacher's College Record, 1913, 14.
Viola, W. Child art and Franz Cizek. Vienna: Austrian Jr. Red Cross, 1936.
Wilson, B. and Wilson, M. An iconoclastic view of the imagery sources in the draw- ings of young people. Art Education, Janu- ary 1977, 30, 5-12.
Wilson, B. and Wilson, M. The persistence of the perpendicular principle: why, when and where innate factors determine the nature of drawings. Proceedings of the National Symposium for Research in Art, 1980.
Marjorie Wilson
Pennsylvania Furnace, Pennsylvania 16865
Brent Wilson
School of Visual Arts Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania 16802
32 M. Wilson, B. Wilson
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN IMPLIED POINTS OF VIEW AND SELECTED POINTS OF VIEW IN CHILDREN'S DRAWINGS OF FAMILIAR AND UNFAMILIAR OBJECTS
James Victoria Michigan State University
Introduction to the Study
In this study, a random sample of 64 children in 4 age groups (6, 8, 10 and 12 years) made drawings from one fa- miliar object and two unfamiliar ob- jects. (Appendix A) The children were free to manipulate the objects and to select the viewpoint from which to draw the objects. The position of the viewpoint of the objects was recorded. The viewpoint or direction of implied view in each drawing was compared with the viewpoint from which the sub- ject had selected to view the stimulus objects.
Data was collected in terms of the following categories and classifica- tions:
1. Age and Sex
2. Object drawn
3. Developmental stage according to Transformation System evi- denced
4. Drawing Class within a Transfor- mation System
5. Selected viewpoint relative to Face or Edge of object
6. Correspondence with viewpoint or direction of view in each draw- ing with the viewpoint from which the subject had selected to view the stimulus object.
Background of the Study
Willats (1979, 1980) has stated that traditional accounts of the develop- ment of drawing ability seem to make drawing dependent upon some type of copying or imitation. This is sup- posed to take place in two main stages.
The imitation of stereotypes by younger children during the period of so-called intellectual realism and, the imitation of appearance of the scene by older children during the period of visual realism. If children in the earlier stages of development of drawing ability have to depend on stereotypes, then we might expect that when asked to draw from an object with which they are unfamiliar, and for which they have no stereotype, they would be unable to make a drawing or would produce the nearest available stereotype.
Willats (1980) found that when chil- dren were given both familiar and un- familiar objects to draw, the younger children were able to draw the unfa- miliar objects as freely and easily, at about the same age, and using the same kind of drawing systems, as they were able to draw the familiar ones. This seems to show that young chil- dren, although they may sometimes use stereotypes, do not have to de- pend on using them. If older children draw by copying the appearance of the scene, then they should be able to draw unfamiliar objects by imitation as easily as familiar ones. Willats found that older children around the ages of 10 or 11 passed through a stage in which they produced drawings which contained "mistakes" — mistakes which are clearly mistakes in the use of drawing "rules" rather than mis- takes in imitating the appearance of
Additional unpublished graphic materials supporting this research are available from the editorial office of the Review of Research in Visual Arts Education.
33
Appendix A
the scene. This seems to show that for older children, as well as for younger children, imitation does not play an important part in the acquisition of drawing ability.
However, if learning to draw de- pends on acquiring drawing rules, what kind of rule systems are they? The rule systems we are probably most familiar with are those of projec- tive geometry; systems like perspec- tive, which map spatial relationships in the scene into spatial relationships in the picture. Besides perspective, there are a variety of other projection systems: orthographic projection which is used by architects, engineers and mapmakers, and other systems such as oblique projection and its variants, which have been common in other periods and cultures, and which appear in children's drawings. Willats has labled these systems as "transfor- mation systems" because they deal with the transformation of spatial re- lationships.
Transformation Systems and Drawing Classes
In Willats' studies (1979, 1980) the developmental sequence revealed in these drawings could best be de- scribed in terms of three main devel- opmental stages corresponding to the three main types of projective systems: orthographic, horizontal and vertical oblique and the various forms of oblique projection.
In the 1st stage designated by Class 2 — Single Aspect drawings, the child is able to use vertical directions on the picture surface to stand for vertical directions in the real scene, and hori- zontal directions on the picture sur- face to stand for horizontal directions in the scene. Directions in the third dimension cannot be represented in this system and are simply omitted from the drawing. Thus a cube in this system would be represented by a square.
The next main stage designated by Class 4 — Horizontal and Vertical Oblique drawings, directions in the third dimension in the scene are rep- resented by either horizontal or verti- cal directions on the picture surface. Since these directions already repre- sent horizontal or vertical directions in the scene, one direction across the surface is made to stand for two direc- tions in the scene, and the resulting drawings are often ambiguous. In this system a cube would be represented by two squares, either side by side — horizontal oblique — or one above the other — vertical oblique.
In the third stage designated by Class 6 — Oblique drawings, directions in the third dimension are represented by oblique directions across the picture surface. This resolves the ambiguity in the previous system. Drawings in various other systems — isometric projection and perspective — may be regarded as variants on oblique projection.
34
James Victoria
The main framework of the develop- mental sequence could be well de- scribed in terms of these transforma- tion systems based on projective geometry; but many of the drawings which preceded those in oblique pro- jections (in terms of mean age of sub- jects for the class) appeared to contain "mistakes." One way of describing these drawings was to say that they were based on a mixture of different transformation systems; i.e., based on a mixture of isometric projection and horizontal oblique projection. These drawings are designated as Class 5 — Near Oblique.
In between drawings in Class 2 (single aspect) and Class 4 (horizontal and vertical oblique) appeared a large number of drawings of a type which have frequently been illustrated in the literature. These drawings are desig- nated as Class 3 — Multiple Aspect drawings. Although this class cannot be defined in terms of projective geom- etry, it lies between two classes which are defined in terms of projective geometry.
Preceding the drawings in Class 2, were drawings which consisted of scribble or closed curved forms. Wil- lats assigned these drawings to Class 1 — Pre Single Aspect.
Thus we have a developmental se- quence consisting of six classes, in which the sequence of classes corre- sponds to the mean age of subjects in each class. (Appendix B)
According to Marr and Nishihara (1977) vision is a process that pro- duces descriptions of the external world which are useful to the viewer; they argue that for the purposes of recognition, the most useful kind of description is object-centered rather than viewer-centered. Object-centered descriptions are defined relative to the objects themselves, while viewer-cen- tered descriptions are defined relative to the viewer.
As we have seen, Willats has demon-
strated that children's drawings of rec- tangular objects may be described in the various systems of projective geometry, and that as children get older, they use systems of increasing complexity in order to produce draw- ings which are increasingly effective as representations: drawings, that is, in which spatial relationships between parts of the object may more readily be seen, so that the object depicted may more readily be recognized. Draw- ings in all common projection systems, up to and including "naive perspec- tive" may in theory be derived from wholly object-centered representa- tions. Nevertheless, since the transfor- mations on which these drawings are based may be described in terms of pro- jective geometry, such drawings, in fact, do imply a particular point or direc- tion of view; it may be that, particularly with older children, transformations from viewer-centered representations, as well as from object-centered repre- sentations may play a part in the draw- ing process. If this is so, then we might expect as children get older they learn to place objects in a position which is useful for drawing, so that there is correspondence between their selected viewpoint, and the point of direction or view implied in the drawing.
Procedures of the Study
In this study, a random sampling of 64 children (age 6, 8, 10 and 12 years) was drawn from two school districts. Six- teen children comprised each age group. Mean ages for each group were: 6 years, 5 months; 8 years, 7 months; 10 years, 7 months; and 12 years, 7 months. Both the 6- and 10-year-old samples were comprised of 75 per- cent girls and 25 percent boys. The 8-year-old sample was comprised of an equal number of boys and girls. The 12-year-old sample consisted of 44 percent boys and 56 percent girls.
Implied and Selected Points of View 35
Appendix B
CLASS 1
PRE SINGLE ASPECT
Mean Age in Years
5.1
CLASS 2 SINGLE ASPECT
CLASS 3 MULTIPLE ASPECT
CLASS 4
HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL OBLIQUE
CLASS 5 NEAR OBLIQUE
CLASS 6 OBLIQUE
■ i ■
'■ ' ■
■ — - — i
i .I
6.6
6.5
7.9
9.6
10.5
71
11.6
8.7
10.7
12.7
36 James Victoria
The Experiment
A room outside the regular classroom was used to conduct the experiment in each of the schools from which the sample population was drawn (two elementary and two middle schools). The room was equipped with a table, chair and grid at the appropriate height for each age level. In the elementary schools, two tables were used: one at a height of 20 inches, the other at 26 inches. A table height of 29 inches was used at the middle schools. Children were able to select the table which provided the most suitable drawing position. On the wall was placed a grid measuring 36 x 35 inches. Each grid was 5x7 inches. The grid was four columns wide and seven columns in height. The grid extended from the front edge of the table 16 inches. The drawing surface was a 12 x 18 inch sheet of white drawing paper placed at the front edge of the table. A one inch tape line separated the drawing paper from an 18 x 18 inch axis sheet, used for placement of the stimulus objects by the subject. Each subject was photographed against the wall grid to record angle of view and eye point while drawing each object. One hundred ninety-two drawings com- prised the total sample.
Each subject was tested individu- ally. Upon entering the room, the sub- jects were told that they would be given three objects to draw, one at a time, and that a photograph would be taken as they drew. They were in- structed to look at each object and handle it as long as they wished. After studying the object, when they were ready to draw, they were to place the object on the axis paper in any posi- tion they found most suitable for draw- ing. They were instructed to select a marker and make their drawing. The subjects were given the stimulus ob- jects in random order. The objects were identified as a cube (C), cube with
cube added (C+) and cube with cube extracted (C-).
After each subject completed each drawing, the experimentor drew a line around the stimulus object on the axis sheet and recorded the faces of the object relative to the subject's line of sight.
Descriptive Analysis of the Study
Descriptive analysis of the data was made for distribution of drawings by Class and developmental sequence characterized by three Transforma- tion Systems, i.e., Orthographic Pro- jection, Horizontal and Vertical Oblique Projection and Oblique Projection; for each age group (N = 48) and the total sample (N = 192).
For all age levels, 30 percent of the drawings were assigned to Class 2; 24 percent to Class 3; 11 percent to Class 4; 16 percent to Class 5 and 19 percent to Class 6.
For categorization of transformation systems, 53 percent of the drawings occur in stage I — Orthographic Pro- jection; 12 percent in stage II — Hori- zontal and Vertical Oblique; and 35 percent in stage III — Oblique.
For distribution of drawings by Class and Transformation Systems for each age level (N = 48), the following results were obtained:
Table 1 illustrates that for the six- year-old sample, 33 drawings assigned to Class 2 — Single Aspect; 15 to Class 3 — Multiple Aspect. All the drawings in this sample were assigned to Trans- formation System I — Orthographic Projection.
The eight-year-old sample illustrated in Table 2 was comprised of 18 draw- ings in Class 2 — Single Aspect; 17 drawings in Class 3 — Multiple Aspect; 3 drawings in Class 4 — Horizontal and Vertical Oblique; 7 drawings in Class 5 — Near Oblique and 2 draw- ings in Class 6 — Oblique. 36 drawings were assigned to Transformation Sys-
Implied and Selected Points of View 37
TABLE 1
Distribution of Drawings by Class and
Transformation System for Six Year
Old Subjects
TRANSFORMATION SYSTEM
CLASS
II
III
33 15
33
15
48
48
TABLE 2
Distribution of Drawings by Class and
Transformation System for Eight Year
Old Subjects
TRANSFORMATION SYSTEM
CLASS
III
|
1 |
1 |
|
2 |
18 |
|
3 |
17 |
|
4 |
|
|
5 |
|
|
6 |
1
18 17
3
7 2
36
48
tern I — Orthographic Projection; 3 drawings to Transformation System II — Horizontal and Vertical Oblique; and 9 drawings to Transformation Sys- tem III — Oblique. One drawing was assigned to Class 1, System I; Pre Single Aspect, Orthographic Projec- tion.
Table 3 gives the distributions for the ten-year-old sample. It shows that 5 drawings occurred in Class 2 — Single Aspect; 11 in Class 3— Multiple As- pect; 12 in Class 4— Horizontal and Vertical Oblique; 13 in Class 5— Near Oblique; and 7 in Class 6 — Oblique. For categorization of Transformation Systems in this sample, 16 drawings occur in System I — Orthographic Pro- jection; 12 in System II — Horizontal
and Vertical Oblique; and 20 in System III — Oblique.
For twelve-year-old subjects, Table 4 shows 3 drawings assigned to Class 3 — Multiple Aspect; 7 to Class 4 — Horizontal and Vertical Oblique; 11 to Class 5 — Near Oblique; and 27 to Class 6 — Oblique. Transformation System I — Orthographic accounted for 3 drawings; System II — Horizontal and Vertical Oblique, 7 drawings; and System III — Oblique, accounted for 38 drawings.
For the category of orientation of drawings by face and edge to viewer's line of sight, the following distributions were recorded. 69 percent of the draw- ings were oriented by face of the ob- ject to the viewer's line of sight; and
TABLE 3
Distribution of Drawings by Class and
Transformation System for Ten Year
Old Subjects
TRANSFORMATION SYSTEM
CLASS
III
5 11
12
13 7
5 11 12 13
7
16 12
20
48
TABLE 4
Distribution of Drawings by Class and
Transformation System for Twleve
Year Old Subjects
TRANSFORMATION SYSTEM
CLASS
II
III
|
3 |
|
|
7 |
|
|
11 |
11 |
|
27 |
27 |
38
48
38
James Victoria
31 percent of the drawings were ori- ented by edge of the object to the viewer's line of sight.
Percentage of drawings oriented to stimulus objects by face and class to viewer's line of sight, are the following for all age groups: Class 2 — Single Aspect, 38 percent; Class 3 — Multi- ple Aspect, 35 percent; Class 4 — Hori- zontal and Vertical Oblique, 16 per- cent; Class 5 — Near Oblique, 7 percent; and Class 6 — Oblique, 16 percent.
The percentage of drawings oriented to stimulus objects by edge and class to viewer's line of sight is as follows: Class 2 — Single Aspect accounts for 16 percent; Class 3 — Multiple Aspect accounts for 18 percent; Class 4 — Horizontal and Vertical Oblique, 0 per- cent; Class 5— Near Oblique, 37 per- cent; and Class 6 — Oblique, 29 percent.
Table 5, Distribution of Drawings by Orientation to Face and Edge by Class For Six-Year-Old Subjects, shows that 37 drawings were oriented by face, and of these, 25 were assigned to Class 2 — Single Aspect and 12 to Class 3 — Multiple Aspect. Eleven drawings were oriented to edge. Of these, 8 were in Class 2 — Single Aspect and 3 were in Class 3 — Multiple Aspect.
Table 6 reveals that for the eight- year-old sample, 39 drawings oriented to face and 9 to edge. Of those draw- ings oriented to face, 17 were in Class 2 — Single Aspect; 14 in Class 3 — Multiple Aspect; 4 in Class 4 — Hori- zontal and Vertical Oblique; 2 in Class 5 — Near Oblique; and 1 each in Class 1 and 6, Presingle Aspect and Oblique. Orientation to edge was evidenced in 9 drawings, 5 drawings in Class 5 — Near Oblique; 1 drawing each in Classes 1, 2, 3 and 6, Presingle As- pect, Single Aspect, Multiple Aspect and Oblique.
For the ten-year-old sample, Table 7 shows 32 drawings oriented to face and 16 oriented to edge. 5 drawings were assigned to Class 2 — Single
TABLE 5
Distribution of Drawings by
Orientation to Face and Edge by Class
for Six Year Old Subjects
|
CLASS |
|||||
|
1 2 |
3 4 |
5 |
6 |
N |
|
|
FACE EDGE |
25 8 |
12 3 |
37 11 |
||
|
N |
33 |
15 |
48 |
TABLE 6
Distribution of Drawings by
Orientation to Face and Edge by Class
for Eight Year Old Subjects
|
CLASS |
|||||||
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
N |
|
|
FACE EDGE |
1 1 |
17 1 |
14 1 |
4 |
2 5 |
1 1 |
39 9 |
|
N |
2 |
18 |
15 |
4 |
7 |
2 |
48 |
TABLE 7
Distribution of Drawings by
Orientation to Face and Edge by Class
for Ten Year Old Subjects
|
CLASS |
||||||
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
N |
|
FACE EDGE |
5 |
7 4 |
11 1 |
5 8 |
4 3 |
32 16 |
|
N |
5 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
7 |
48 |
Aspect; 7 to Class 3— Multiple As- pect; 11 to Class 4— Horizontal and Vertical Oblique; 5 to Class 5 — Near Oblique and 4 to Class 6 — Oblique. In drawings oriented to edge, there were 4 in Class 3— Multiple Aspect; 1 to Class 4 — Horizontal and Vertical Oblique; 8 to Class 5— Near Oblique; and 3 to Class 6 — Oblique.
Table 8 shows that for the twelve- year-old sample, 25 drawings oriented to face and 23 drawings oriented to edge of the stimulus objects. In orien- tation to face, 2 drawings comprised Glasses 3 and 5, Multiple Aspect and Near Oblique; 7 in Class 4 — Horizon-
Implied and Selected Points of View 39
TABLE 8
Distribution of Drawings by
Orientation to Face and Edge by Class
for Twelve Year Old Subjects
|
CLASS |
||||||
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
N |
|
FACE EDGE |
2 1 |
7 |
2 9 |
14 13 |
25 23 |
|
|
N |
3 |
7 |
11 |
27 |
48 |
tal and Vertical Oblique; and 14 to Class 6 — Oblique. Orientation to edge shows 1 drawing assigned to Class 3 — Multiple Aspect; 9 to Class 5— Near Oblique; and 13 to Class 6— Oblique.
Descriptive analysis of Correspon- dence Between Selected Viewpoint and Implied Viewpoint for Each Ob- ject for each age group are illustrated in Tables 9 through 12.
Distributions relative to correspon- dence were analyzed relative to the three stimulus objects — cube (C), cube with cube added (C+) and cube with cube extracted (C-) — for each age group in the sample.
For the stimulus object C, 12 of the drawings showed correspondence by six-year-olds; 14 by eight-year-olds; 13 by ten-year-olds; and 16 by twelve-year- olds.
There was no correspondence for stimulus object C in 4 of the six-year- old drawings; 3 of the eight-year-olds; and 3 of the ten-year-olds.
For stimulus object C-, 13 of all drawings by six-year-olds showed cor- respondence; 13 of the eight-year-olds; 15 of the ten-year-olds; and 16 of the twelve-year-olds.
No correspondence was evidenced for C- in 3 drawings of the six-year- old sample; 2 of the eight-year-old sample; and 1 in the ten-year-old sample.
For stimulus object C + , 11 of the six-year-old drawings showed corre- spondence; 15 of the eight-year-olds; 15 of the ten-year-olds; and 16 for the twelve-year-olds.
TABLE 9
Correspondence Between Selected
Viewpoint and Implied Viewpoint for
Each Object for Six Year Old Subjects
|
CORRE- |
NO CORRE- |
||
|
OBJECT |
SPONDENCE |
SPONDENCE |
N |
|
C |
12 |
4 |
16 |
|
C - |
13 |
3 |
16 |
|
C + |
11 |
5 |
16 |
|
N |
36 |
12 |
48 |
TABLE 10
Correspondence Between Selected
Viewpoint and Implied Viewpoint for
Each Object for Eight Year Old
Subjects
|
CORRE- |
NO CORRE- |
||
|
OBJECT |
SPONDENCE |
SPONDENCE |
N |
|
C |
14 |
3 |
17 |
|
C - |
13 |
2 |
15 |
|
C + |
15 |
1 |
16 |
|
N |
42 |
6 |
48 |
TABLE 11
Correspondence Between Selected
Viewpoint and Implied Viewpoint for
Each Object for Ten Year Old Subjects
|
CORRE- |
NO CORRE- |
||
|
OBJECT |
SPONDENCE |
SPONDENCE |
N |
|
C |
13 |
3 |
16 |
|
c - |
15 |
1 |
16 |
|
c + |
15 |
1 |
16 |
|
N |
43 |
5 |
48 |
TABLE 12
Correspondence Between Selected
Viewpoint and Implied Viewpoint for
Each Object for Twelve Year Old
Subjects
|
OBJECT |
CORRE- SPONDENCE |
NO CORRE- SPONDENCE |
N |
|
C C - C + |
16 16 16 |
16 16 16 |
|
|
N |
48 |
48 |
40
James Victoria
No correspondence was evidenced in 5 of the six-year-old drawings and one each in both the eight- and ten- year-old samples, for stimulus object C + .
The total sample (N = 192) for all three stimulus objects shows that a total of 169 drawings evidenced corre- spondence between selected viewpoint and implied viewpoint and, that only 23 drawings in the sample evidenced no correspondence.
Summary and Conclusions
The basic assumptions underlying this study were that:
1. Drawing of rectangular objects by children may be described in the various systems of projective geometry.
2. As children get older, they use systems of increasing complexity in order to produce drawings which are increasingly effective as representations.
3. The transformations on which these drawings are based may be described in terms of projective geometry; such drawings imply a particular point or direction of view, so that there is correspon- dence between selected orienta- tion to face or edge primitives and the transformations used in drawing.
4. Children, as they get older, learn to place objects in a position which is useful for drawing, so that there is correspondence be- tween the selected viewpoint and the point or direction of view im- plied in the drawing.
The results of this study support the assumption that when drawing rectangular objects, children use repre- sentations which can be described in the various systems of projective geometry, and as they get older, use increasingly more complex systems. 53 percent of all drawings in the sample
(N = 192) were characterized as Ortho- graphic Projections; 12 percent as Hori- zontal and Vertical Oblique Projections; and 35 percent as Oblique Projections. Further, for the six- and eight-year-old samples (N = 96) 87 percent of the draw- ings were characterized as Ortho- graphic Projections, the least complex projection system. However, for the 10- and 12-year-old samples (N = 96) 20 percent of the drawings were character- ized as Horizontal and Vertical Oblique Projections and 60 percent of the draw- ings were characterized as Oblique Pro- jections, the most complex projection system.
The assumption that there is corre- spondence between face or edge primi- tives and implied view point as charac- terized by the projection systems used seems to be supported. For the total sample (N = 192) 69 percent of the draw- ings were oriented by face to the viewer's line of sight and 31 percent were oriented by edge to the viewer's line of sight. Of those drawings oriented by face to viewer's line of sight, 89 per- cent were accounted for by transforma- tions characterized as Orthographic and Horizontal and Vertical Oblique Projections. Transformations based on Oblique Projections accounted for 66 percent of all drawings oriented by edge to,the viewer's line of sight.
That 88 percent of all drawings in the sample (N = 192) for all three stimulus objects evidenced correspondence with the selected direction or point of view indicates that most children, when given the opportunity to position the objects, will place these objects in a way that is useful to them in drawing. In ad- dition, the data shows that by age level, as the children get older, there is in- creasing correspondence between selected direction of view and implied direction of view in the drawings for all three stimulus objects. For six-year- olds, 75 percent of the drawings show correspondence; for eight-year-olds, 88 percent of the drawings show corre- spondence; for the ten-year-olds, 90
Implied and Selected Points of View 41
percent of the drawings show corre- spondence; and for twelve-year-olds, 100 percent of the drawings evidenced correspondence.
Thus, the data indicates that chil- dren, as they get older, learn to place objects in a position useful for draw- ing so that there is correspondence between the selected viewpoint and the point of direction or view implied in the drawing.
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge research support for this study from Michigan State University and to thank particu- larly John Willats, Faculty of Art and Design, Northeast London Polytech- nic, for his helpful discussions and for sharing with me his on-going research findings in this area of investigation.
I would also like to express my appre- ciation to Mr. Frank Philip, Director, ARTS Project, Waverly Public Schools, for his cooperation in facilitating vari- ous aspects of the study; and also the school administrators, parents and
children for their cooperation and par- ticipation.
References
Marr, D. and Nishihara, H. K. Representation and recognition of the spatial organiza- tion or three-dimensional shapes. The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, 1977.
Willats, J. How children learn to draw realis- tic pictures. Quarterly Journal of Experi- mental Psychology, 1977, 29, 367-382.
Willats, J. Implicit rules: some of the truth about children's drawings. Victoria, J. and Sacca, E. J. Eds. Presentations on Art Education Research, 1979, No. 3, 11-23.
Willats, J. What do the marks in the picture stand for? The child's acquisition of sys- tems of transformation and denotation. National Art Education Association Con- ference, 1980, Atlanta, Georgia.
James Victoria
Department of Art Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan 48824
42
James Victoria
COMPOSITIONAL DESIGN AS A PERCEPTUAL DETERMINANT OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT1
Calvin F. Nodine Temple University
There has been much speculation from both artists and art connoisseurs alike about how compositional design affects the way paintings are viewed and judge aesthetically. Typical of such speculations is one by Dondis (1973) stating that what holds true for both complex shapes and complicated compositions is ". . . the eye seeks out the felt axis in any visual event in an unending process of establishing rela- tive balance" (p. 27). Yet, there is little scientific evidence to support the claim of Dondis, and others, who have em- phasized the significant role that the eye plays in the analysis of visual dis- plays, and in particular the analysis of paintings.
The purpose of my paper is to exam- ine the relationship between composi- tional design, visual scanning behavior and aesthetic judgment. Compositional design refers to the arrangement of visual elements — lines, colors and forms — which make up a painting. This definition, which stresses design, reflects the view of the Neotraditional- ist artist, Maurice Dennis, who said that a painting ". . . before it is a battle horse, a nude woman, or some anec- dote is essentially a plane surface cov- ered with colors arranged in a certain order" (Chipp, 1968, p. 94). Dennis' definition can be applied to more tra- ditional styles of art by re-emphasiz- ing the very issue he was fighting against, the representational signifi- cance of the arrangement of visual elements.
For the artists that I chose to study, visual elements were combined into forms denoting real-world objects and events. Thus, emphasis shifts from the
perceptual arrangements of visual forms to the logical arrangement of visual content. There has been much written about this relationship dating back to the Greeks who thought that compositional harmony could be ex- pressed mathematically (Hambridge, 1920). From the Greeks came geo- metric relationships derived from the Golden Section (Boas and Wrenn, 1964). These geometric relationships were integrated into formal composi- tional rules by later artists, in particu- lar, Renaissance painters.
Bouleau (1963) has referred to these formal compositional rule systems as "The Painter's Secret Geometry." He has shown how this geometry influ- enced not only Renaissance but mod- ern painters as well.
Bouleau's analysis examines the thesis that formally-derived geometric relationships guided the arrangement of visual content for many well-known artists. Although his work focuses on representational painting, he also shows how the Golden Section has been used by some nonrepresenta- tional painters (e.g. Modrian).
Although Bouleau's thoughtful anal- ysis of paintings provided me with a scientific basis for testing the rela- tionship between compositional de- sign and looking behavior, the inspira- tion for this paper really came from Isabel Bishop, a well-known New York figurative painter. It was she, through her paintings, who first introduced me to the significance of the golden sec- tion. She believes that the diamond formed when strings are stretched di- agonally across her rectangular canvas and the square within it reveals ". . .
43
an especially significant area in the content of a picture." (Lunde, 1975, p. 73). You will see one of her paintings later.
There have been a number of scien- tific studies of the way that people look at paintings. Probably the best known studies are those of Buswell (1935) and Brandt (1945) who recorded eye move- ments of subjects as they looked at a variety of visual displays among which were paintings. Buswell distinguished two types of fixations as the eye ana- lyzed a painting: survey fixations which occurred early and were designed to provide a general characterization of the painting; examination fixations, usually of longer duration, concen- trated on visual features. More recent evidence by Antes (1974) and my own research (Nodien, Carmody & Kundel, 1978; Nodine, Carmody & Herman, 1979) suggest that survey fixations not only serve to provide an overall char- acterization of the painting but also serve to define clusters of interrelated visual elements which are then sub- jected to a detailed analysis by longer- duration examination fixations.
None of the above-mentioned studies have actually manipulated the design of a painting in order to see how it affects the way the eye analyzes the painting, or how this analysis is linked to judgments as to which design is more pleasing aesthetically. The pres- ent study remedies this shortcoming by focusing on the relationship be- tween looking and judging. It asks first, how the ordering of visual content in- fluences the viewer's pattern of atten- tion, and second, whether this pattern of attention reflects an analysis of per- ceptual relationships used in making aesthetic judgments.
The present study, more specifically, compares the visual scanning behavior to two paintings having identical visual elements but different compositional arrangements. This was accomplished by experimentally manipulating the visual elements in a group of paintings
selected on the basis of Bouleau's analyses. The manipulation consisted of changing the relationship among visual elements by cutting the paint- ings apart, re-ordering the parts, and pasting them back together. This ma- nipulation had the effect of producing a new composition having the same visual elements as the original paint- ing. The proportions of the painting remained relatively unchanged. Only the design changed. The effect, as you will see, was to produce a set of paint- ings in which new relationships among visual elements changed the repre- sentational significance of the com- positions.
Method
It is the relationship between the de- sign and content of visual elements — the unique mapping of visual content on to a formal geometric structure — that unifies a painting compositionally according to Bouleau's analysis. This relationship is examined in his anal- ysis of Seurat's painting, La Parade, chosen for the study because of Seu- rat's strict adherence to geometric formalism in the design of his paint- ings. I shudder to think what Seurat would have said about my altered ver- sion which destroys the balance among visual elements so carefully worked out in the original. The original and altered versions of La Parade are shown in Figure 1. For the moment, ignor the broken vertical lines and numbers. I shall return to them later when I discuss the results. Two more of Seurat's paintings were also used in the study. One was The Models shown in Figure 2 in the original and altered version. The other pair con- sisted of two sketches for La Grande Jarre: an early sketch and a final sketch shown in Figure 3. The alterations in this case were done by the artist, of course.
Two other paintings were altered. One was Isabel Bishop's Five Women
44
Calvin Nodine
Fig. 1 — La Parade
-3 +4 -6 +9 -2 0
Fig. 2 — The Model
Fig. 3 — La Grande Jatte
Walking #2 shown in Figure 4 in the original which displays the formal sym- metry that her paintings are known for, and my alteration which breaks up this formal symmetry. The diagonal lines to the square and rectangle reveal the diamond which, according to Bishop, plays a key role in the analysis of the composition by the eye by virtue of its likelihood of receiving the viewer's early attention (Bishop, 1980).
The fifth painting, again chosen for its expression of formal symmetry, was Piero della Francesca's Flagella- tion shown in the original form and altered form in Figure 5. In this case the alteration deletes a key composi- tional element from a representational standpoint, the Flagellant, without which the narrative sense of the paint- ing is lost. The formal symmetry is also taken out of balance by the re- moval of the space occupied by the flagellant which changes the propor- tions of the architectural structure
Composition as Perceptual Determinants 45
0.1 2 3.45
0 +6 -4 +8 -1 -5 -4
Fig. 4 — Five Women Walking #2
+1 -17 +9 +1 +8 -1
Fig. 5 — The Flagellation
housing the group of figures on the left containing Christ.
The five pairs of paintings were shown to eight adult subjects. All but two of these subjects were either sci- entists or engineers. An artist and art educator completed the sample.
The two versions of each painting were presented sequentially, the order of the original and altered versions being counterbalanced over subjects. Subjects were given 5 seconds to veiw each version of the pair. Following presentation, subjects were instructed to judge which of the two versions represented a more harmonious ar- rangement of visual elements and sub- ject matter and to explain the reasons for their choice.
As the subjects looked at the paint- ings, their eye movements were re- corded using a Biometrics eye-move- ment monitor interfaced to a PDP 1 1/40 computer.
The eye movement monitor con- sisted of two infrared sensors attached to a pair of spectacles. The right sen- sor measured horizontal movements and the left sensor measured vertical movements. The subject's head was held stationary by a combination head- holder and bite-board. Movements of the eyes were sensed and translated into voltage changes which were then digitized and interpreted as changes in fixation or attention within the field of view. A more technical discussion of the eye-movement system is pre- sented in Carmody, Nodine & Kundel (1980).
During the 5 seconds in which sub- jects viewed each version of a paint- ing, shifts in attention produced unique fixation patterns. For analysis pur- poses, these fixation patterns were superimposed over the appropriate version of a painting. Each version of a painting was divided into seven col- umns. The amount of attention in terms of time spent fixating each column was determined for each subject.
46 Calvin Nodine
All subjects were required to begin scanning each picture in the lower left corner of column 5. This insured uniformity of starting location and pre- vented the subject from fixating the center of the display initially. This pro- cedure resulted in a bias which in- creased the amount of looking in col- umn 5. The attention time in column 5 was corrected by subtracting out initial fixations.
Results
All of the paintings described above were designed using formal composi- tional rules based on the golden sec- tion. These rules specify potential sites for the placement of key visual con- tent, but not the form that this con- tent will take, nor the order in which it will be arranged. These decisions are left to artistic intuition.
Arbitrarily re-arranging visual con- tent effectively severs logical connec- tions among visual forms carrying key representational information. The ar- rangement of visual content is lack- ing, and, it is this logical issue that should be the focus of the subject's judgments of compositional harmony.
This hypothesis was tested by ask- ing three questions of the eye move- ment data. First, how do subjects start looking at a painting? Is their initial glance influenced by past experi- ence, especially after having seen one version of a painting? Second, how do alterations in composition affect the way the painting is viewed? What shifts in attention occur? Third, how do changes in the way the painting is viewed affect judgments of composi- tional harmony?
The first question asks how past ex- perience affects the way that visual scanning is initiated. Does the fact that Western Painting, which tradi- tionally arranges key content informa- tion around the center of the composi- tion, cause the eye to seek information
in the center of the painting as so many artists believe?
To answer this question, I looked at the first four fixations of all eight sub- jects over all five pairs of pictures, a total of 80 eye-movement records. The results indicate that attention shifts from the pre-determined starting point in the lower right hand corner of col- umn 5 (proportion of fixations in col- umn 5 on fixation 1 was .88), which all subjects were required to fixate first, to the center of the display desig- nated by columns 2, 3 & 4 by fixation
3 (proportion = .72), and to left center columns 2 & 3 containing Bishop's dia- mond by fixation 4 (proportion = .64). Thus, in less than a second, most sub- jects were fixating the center of the painting. Although there was some variability as to whether fixation 3 was left, right or dead center, there is no question that an initial looking bias existed in my subjects for the center of the painting. From a perceptual viewpoint, moving the eyes to the cen- ter would yield more effective use of peripheral vision allowing an overall glimpse of the painting which might be useful in assessing over composi- tional design.
Interestingly, the initial looking bias was not altered by looking at first one version of the painting and then the otheV. The pattern of the first four fixa- tions was almost identical for painting in original-altered and altered-original sequences.
Fixation data were analyzed by super- imposing the same six column grid over each version of the five paintings. Each column represents a width of 7.2 cm or a 5 degree visual angle. Visual con- tent in each of these columns was re- lated to eye-fixation patterns.
Although the initial four fixations focused on the center of the painting, fixation patterns during the remaining
4 seconds of viewing differed signifi- cantly for each version of a painting. These fixation pattern differences were
Composition as Perceptual Determinants 47
examined by looking at shifts in atten- tion among the six columns between one version of the pair and the other. As expected, shifts in attention were unique for each pair of paintings. Let me illustrate.
The first pair was Seurat's Models. Subjects gave the standing model in the center a great deal of attention in the original version as illustrated by the typical fixation pattern shown in Figure 6A. In the altered version, attention shifted to the sitting model on the left. This shift occurred, according to sub- ject explanations, because of the un- natural perspective of the room that, unknown to them, resulted from my re- versing right and left halves of the painting so that the back wall on the right side of the original became left front wall of the altered version and vice versa. All eight subjects who chose
the original remarked about this per- spective problem, a representational issue that detracted from the composi- tional harmony of the altered. Their shifts in attention from the original to the altered version measured as per- cent viewing time and percent change in viewing time in columns 0-6 are shown below the original and altered versions of each painting in Figures 1-5. The top row gives the percent of fixa- tion time in each column for the origi- nal. The bottom row gives the percent change in fixation time from original to altered version. Returning to Figure 2, the numbers below the altered ver- sion indicate that both of the sitting models received more attention in this version than in the original version. Another visual feature frequently men- tioned was the painting within the painting of La Grande Jatte which,
Fig. 6A — The Models (original)
48
Calvin Nodine
along with the standing model on the right, received increased attention in the altered version as shown in Figure 6B.
The relationship between shifts in attention and choices for one composi- tion over the other was expressed simi- larly in all of the remaining pairs.
In Seurat's Parade all but one sub- ject chose the original version in which the visual elements, according to Bou- leau's analysis, are carefully arranged to balance attention among orchestra, trombone player and conductor. The percentages in Figure 1 indicate that in the altered version, attention shifted to the conductor on the left who is no longer conducting, or to the orchestra which, by being moved to right center, steals the solo away from the trombone player on the far right.
Turning to a more contemporary painter, Isabel Bishop's painting pro-
duced more disagreement among subjects about which version is more harmonious compositionally, and, two different patterns of looking at each ver- sion. The altered version was preferred 4-3 with one undecided. Those that chose the original stressed the geo- metric balance of movement in the composition. Those that chose the altered version stressed the dynamic feeling of movement associated with the asymmetrical arrangement of fig- ures. Attention was shifted between the three women on the left and the pair on the right whose walking direc- tions produced varied patterns com- pared with the synchronized walking patterns depicted in the original. Dif- ferences in choice produced differ- ences in both patterns of attention, and change, between original and al- tered versions. Figure 4 indicates that attention patterns for both choices
Fig. 6B — The Models (altered)
Composition as Perceptual Determinants 49
focus on the three women in the center in the original.
The altered version produced dif- ferences in attention patterns. The original choice focused on the woman in purple (second from right) moving left, which presumably upset the bal- ance of the composition according to their preference. The altered choice focused on the opposition between the same woman in purple (third from right row) moving left and the woman with one black stocking (last on right) mov- ing right, which created a dynamic movement-countermovement. This is reflected in the fixation pattern in Fig- ure 7. You will also note in Figure 4 that attention within the diamond lo- cated in column 3, which is a key area for Bishop, increased with the shift of the woman in purple to column 3 in the altered version.
Moving back in time to the Renais- sance, Piero della Francesca's Flagel- lation was the most difficult painting to alter, and, although the changes in this picture were generally less notice- able according to subject's reports, the alterations nevertheless produced significant changes in attention refer- ring back to Figure 5. The original was preferred over the altered version 6-2. What is interesting about this painting is how the artist balanced the three visually dominant figures in the right foreground with the group containing the central action in the left back- ground by framing the left group within an architectural space. Many of the subjects commented on this balance issue which was noted in both ver- sions but somewhat less so in the altered version. The other significant feature of the composition is the flagel-
Fig. 7 — Five Women Walking #2 (altered)
50
Calvin Nodine
lant, whose central placement and raised arm singles him out visually from Christ and the accompanying figures. The action represented in the composition and the recipient of it, draws a great deal of attention in the original as the typical fixation pattern in Figure 8A shows. When the flagel- lant is removed attention shifts to the three figures on the right (Figure 8B).
The overall attention patterns shown in Figure 5 confirm this point. Two sig- nificant shifts show up when the al- tered version is presented. First, at- tention is drawn away from Christ to the void left by the removal of the flag- ellant. His removal affects the composi- tion both visually and logically, since the actor and action are no longer present — only the recipient. Subject attention shifts to column 3 regardless of the order of the pictures, original- altered or altered-original; so the ef- fect is not due primarily to memory but because of the unresolved action.
Second, the removal of the flagel- lant changes the actor-action relation-
ship, shifting the bulk of attention to the three figures on the right. Many subjects remarked that these three figures seemed more dominant in the altered version even though they could not point to a difference between the two versions.
All of the pairs considered thus far have compared carefully planned com- positions against arbitrary composi- tions made up of the same elements. The final pair tested the effect of a planned change by the artist from an early sketch of La Grande Jarre to a final sketch. The two sketches differ compositionally as indicated in the overlay shown in Figure 9. The final sketch is brighter than the earlier one both here and in the colored original. More importantly from a compositional standpoint, Seurat's final version is more balanced than the earlier one. He gained this balance by (a) removing the standing figure and changing the relationship of the dominant figure grouping on the right (b) adding a dis- tinctive form, the lady with the red
Fig. 8A — The Flagellation (original)
Composition as Perceptual Determinants 51
Fig. 8B — The Flagellation (altered)
unbrella, thus creating a central focal point and (c) making minor changes in the arrangement of the minor group- ings in the right central and left fore- ground.
Which version did my subjects choose? The final version, 6-2. Atten- tion patterns (Figure 3) are balanced between left, right and center in the final sketch (top), whereas the earlier sketch (bottom) lacks focus so that attention is overbalanced on the ends, leaving a hole in the center.
The results, as far as Seurat is con- cerned, support his theory of composi- tion which applies the secret geometry so systematically. Given his penchant for science (Homer, 1964), I think he would have forgiven my brutal treat- ment of his compositions.
The findings generalize beyond Seurat, however. The arrangement of visual elements directly affects the way the eye analyzes a composition. Initial fixations (1-4) gravitate to the left center of the painting due to a
looking bias that reflects a character- istic of information patterns in pictures generally. Whether the painter's secret geometry, which stresses the impor- tance of the left center of a picture, is the cause or the effect of the looker's bias is not clear. However, the left center area plays a significant role in establishing an overall impression of the arrangement of visual information in a picture.
The model that these finding suggest is one in which visual structure, atten- tion and judgments of compositional design are intimately related.
First, visual structure resulting from the artist's use of formal composi- tional rules of the type suggested by Bouleau, provides a framework for arranging visual content. The center of the picture is used as a major focal point around which visual content is arranged. Bishop says, ". . . one can either give this area particular density and clarification leading to it from the ambiguous forms and spaces around
52
Calvin Nodine
Fig. 9 — The Grande Jatte (overlay)
it, or conversely, leave it empty with clearer forms around it" (Lunde, 1975, pp. 73-74).
Second, based on an overall char- acterization of the composition derived from initial survey fixations, visual scanning seeks out logical relation- ships between visual form and content using long-duration examination fixa- tions. The result is a unique fixation pattern with multiple focal points re- vealing detailed analysis of represen- tational connections among visual content.
Finally, from these attention pat- terns, inferences can be drawn about the importance assigned to the ar- rangement of visual content in making judgments about compositional de- sign, which can to some extent be corroborated by subject reports.
This model suggests a number of
interesting questions about other re- lationships between visual structure and perception. For example, what is the nature of the visual-form relation- ships expressed in non-representa- tional paintings, and how does it differ from representational paintings? (An issue close to Maurice Dennis' heart.) How does art education affect the kinds of relationships that viewers fo- cus on? Our findings suggest that art training may influence attention strate- gies.
Footnote
1. Based on a paper presented at the Na- tional Symposium for Research in Art, Uni- versity of Illinois, October 7-10, 1980. This study was performed during a research and study leave granted to me by Temple Uni- versity, 1979-80. I wish to express my appre- ciation to Isabel Bishop for her encourage-
Composition as Perceptual Determinants 53
ment and guidance in designing this study, James J. McGinnis who helped with the data analysis, and Barbara Nodine whose edi- torial suggestions helped clarify my writing.
References
Antes, J. R. The time course of picture view- ing. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1974, 103, 62-70.
Bishop, I. Personal Communication, August 30, 1980.
Boas, G., & Wrenn, H. H. What is a picture? New York: Shocken, 1964.
Bouleau, C. The painter's secret geometry. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963.
Brandt, H. F. The psychology of seeing. New York: Philosophical Library, 1935.
Buswell, G. T. How people look at pictures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935.
Carmody, D. P., Kundel, H. L, & Nodine, C. F. Performance of a computer system for recording eye fixations using limbus re- flection. Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation, 1980, 12, 63-66.
Chipp, H. B. Theories of modern art. Berke- ley: University of California Press, 1968.
Dondis, D. A. A primer of visual literacy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973.
Hambridge, J. Dynamic symmetry: the Greek vase. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1920.
Homer, W. I. Seurat and the science of color. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1964.
Lunde, K. Isabel Bishop. New York: Abrams, 1973.
Nodine, C. F., Carmody, D. P. & Kundel, H. L. Searching for NINA. In J. W. Senders, D. F. Fisher, & R. A. Monty (Eds.) Eye Movements and the Higher Psychological Functions. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1978.
Nodine, C. F., Carmody, D. P. & Herman, E. Eye movements during visual search for artistically embedded targets. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 1979, 13, 371-374.
Calvin F. Nodine
Department of Educational Psychology
Temple University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
54
Calvin Nodine
CHILDREN'S COMPREHENSION OF PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION
Harry Beilin
City University of New York
In this paper I describe a program of research devoted to an understanding of photographic representation. This program is motivated in part by the recognition that in an industrialized society photographs are so pervasive as to significantly affect the conscious- ness and understanding of both adults and children. Despite the fact that mod- ern photographic technology has been with us for at least 150 years and an estimated billion photographs, if not more, are produced each year through- out the world, it is surprising how little is known of the processes by which photographs come to represent mean- ing, communicate information, act as instruments of social control and ex- change, and serve as aesthetic objects. Nor is very much known about how children acquire the competencies to extract from or impose meaning upon photographs, although photographs are encountered very early in their lives and are used extensively in their education long before formal school- ing begins.
Psychologists and others have for the most part treated photographs, either explicitly or implicitly, as though they functioned in the same manner as other pictures and bore the same rela- tion to the objects of representation and the viewer as other pictures. Among psychologists, however, Ru- dolf Arnheim is an exception. He says, "The photograph has an authenticity from which painting is barred (1974, p. 154)," and, "All I have said derives ultimately from the fundamental pecu- liarity of the photographic medium. The physical objects themselves print their image by means of the optical and chemical action of light." Thus, "(1)
The picture is coproduced by nature and man and in some ways looks strik- ingly like nature, and (2) the picture is viewed as something made by nature (p. 156)," and lastly, "(the) conviction that the picture was generated by a camera profoundly influences the way he views and uses it (p. 156)."
To a social critic like Susan Sontag (On Photography, 1977), there is no question but that the photograph influ- ences the manner in which the world is reacted to; this is quite different from the influence of other means of communication, representation and persuasion. Enough, in fact, to per- suade her that photography is inher- ently an evil force in the present social order, an instrument of perpetuating the status quo and a means of social control that robs the individual of the joy of direct experience, and the social system of the opportunity for change.
To the art critics and artists of the 1800's, the photograph was suffi- ciently different in kind so that on its appearance it created terror in their hearts and led to Beaudelaire's dra- matic declaration, "Henceforth, paint- ing is dead!", even if this reflected at least a partial misunderstanding of both painting and photography. From the 1840's, when modern photography was invented, until recently (the past 20 years) photography was considered as only barely qualified to be consid- ered a legitimate art form for reasons related, interestingly enough, to dif- ferences in theories of pictorial repre-
Presented at the National Symposium for Research in Art conference, "Learning in Art," at the University of Illinois, Urbana, October, 1980.
55
sentation and the relations of such forms to reality. To put it succinctly, these questions concern the fidelity of photographs to reality and their authenticity as documentation of the real. In one view, photographs capture a trace of the object itself. In effect the photographer and the camera merely record what is perceived (a position held by J. J. Gibson). In an- other view, the photograph is the prod- uct of the photographer's conception of the objects of representation. The photograph does not correspond to reality but to the schemata (Gombrich) that structure the picture makers' "dia- logue with the world" (Worth, 1981).
This fundamental difference in con- ception of the nature and function of photographs divides social scientists, humanists, art critics and others who have given serious attention to the nature of photography.
Do the presumed differences be- tween photographs and other pictorial forms have a basis in fact and does the photographic process differ from nor- mal vision? Photographic representa- tion differs from seeing and other modes of picturing in a number of ways. Vision, for one, is not set in a rectangular boundary as is the photo- graph and related modes of depiction. The photograph shows everything in sharp focus from edge to edge, which does not accord with foveal and periph- eral vision. The black and white photo- graph clearly differs from the world as experienced in color, but even color photographs differ from the experi- enced color of the world (Snyder, 1980). Photographs differ significantly from other forms of representation in having a fixed station point, that is, they are projections from a single view- ing position; paintings and drawings need not be. The photographic image is inexhaustible in ways no other pic- torial representation can be, to which any enlargement of a photograph at- tests. These differences certainly em- phasize that the structural character-
istics of the camera (its shape, lens, etc.) affect the ultimate character of the photograph and the way it is com- prehended. But that is not the entire story, inasmuch as photographic con- ventions clearly contribute to the crea- tion and understanding of what the photograph is intended to convey. These conventions are evident in the photographer's manipulation and use of lighting to affect mood and attitude, in the darkroom manipulations of mon- tage, of pose and hundreds of details upon which an entire industry of photo- graphic manual publishing feeds. Not only is the professional photographer's expertise based on the exploitation of such conventional knowledge, a good portion of contemporary photographic art is derived from experimentation that leads to the creation of new con- ventions (as for example in Jerry Uels- mann's montages, or Steven Shore's use of color).
Nevertheless, whether the theorist is a realist or a conventionalist, the view is shared that in ordinary circum- stances the beholder views the photo- graph as portraying a real event having occurred. This is most striking in those cases of political dirty tricks in which photographs are faked for the pur- pose of embarrassing a political figure or statesman. There are memorable examples from many political cam- paigns. These darkroom manipula- tions are based on the assumption that viewers believe that what they see in photographs is a true depiction of reality.
Our research program has devoted two studies to determining some fea- tures of the child's belief in photo- graphic fidelity. In the first of these studies (O'Connor, Beilin & Kose, 1981), we sought a test of this oft-observed and commented on phenomenon, in a condition that would stretch belief in the authenticity of photographs to the maximum. We reasoned that if children could be shown to believe in the fidelity of photographs when the
56 Harry Beilin
photographs were of an illogical event, even though subjects at the same time could view the actual event, it would be very strong evidence for the exis- tence of the belief in photographic fidelity in children. For this purpose we created an experimental condition in which photographs depicted illogi- cal events. We capitalized on the well- known Piagetian conservation of liq- uids task, in which liquid is poured from a low wide container to a tall narrow one. Children can be distin- guished by whether they are able to judge if the amount has been con- served (i.e., if the amount of liquid is the same or different after the pour- ing). If they judge correctly they are identified as operational conservers; if not, they are considered preopera- tional. They might also be transitional between the two states, but we omitted such children from our study. Conser- vation is also manifest in other quan- titative contexts, and we established the cognitive level of our subjects in a pretest by a conservation of number task. We set up an experiment which ultimately had four conditions, and 200 subjects approximately 6 years of age. In the first condition, subjects were presented with a series of color photographic slides of a conservation of liquid task that ended in an illogical outcome. Either before or after this viewing, they saw a standard conser- vation of liquid task with the actual materials that ended in the standard (i.e., logical) fashion. After viewing both they were asked first if they saw a difference between the conditions and then which was the way the task "really" should be if they saw a differ- ence, either the (logical) materials or the (illogical) photographs. A sub- stantial proportion of both concrete operational (30%) and preoperational children (90%) reported the illogical photographic condition to reflect with fidelity the true condition. The effect was significantly influenced by the order of presentation and the opera-
tional level of the child. That is, the operational level children resisted the influence of the illogical photograph, particularly if the real materials condi- tion was presented first.
There were three contrast or con- trol conditions in the experiment. In one, subjects were presented with an illogical conservation outcome using real materials contrasted with a logi- cal-outcome photograph. In this case fidelity judgments were also affected by task presentation order and opera- tional level. In the second, contrast condition subjects were presented with two standard materials conservation conditions, one with an illogical out- come, the other with a logical out- come. In this case the choice between alternatives was random. In the third contrast, we sought to determine whether children would have the same belief in fidelity with drawings of the conservation task as they did with photographs. We found some evidence of an effect, but the pattern of response to the drawings was different. First, with drawings no children reported that they saw no difference between the two conditions (whereas 30% of the concrete operational did so in the illogical photographic condition). Sec- ondly, with drawings, substantially more subjects chose the standard logi- cal condition than was true for the photographic condition. Thus, while drawings elicited a belief that they truly represented what they depict, the effect with photographs was signifi- cantly more compelling.
In a further study of photographic fidelity (O'Connor, 1981; O'Connor, Beilin & Kose, 1981), we took note that our first study was based on conserva- tion task judgments. Such judgments are dependent to a significant extent, or so it has been claimed, upon knowl- edge of the physical properties en- gaged by that task, such as knowledge of the properties of continuous liquids and discontinuous solids. Since such knowledge could conceivably influ-
Photographic Representation 57
ence fidelity judgments, we wished to provide a more stringent test of the fidelity thesis by offering an experi- mental context in which the task used required judgments that were more logically based than those of a conser- vation experiment. For this purpose O'Connor used a transitivity task (seri- ated wooden blocks) in which logical and illogical photographs of the task were contrasted with actual physical objects. (In a transitivity task blocks of heights A and B are compared and independently B and C heights are compared; then a comparative judg- ment of A and C is sought without the blocks present.) This transitivity study shows that, as one would expect, cog- nitive level has a consistent effect across both conservation and transi- tivity tasks, indicating that on the whole more cognitively advanced subjects will resist the influence of illogical photographs and preoperational chil- dren will not. This result, however, is affected by presentation order which interacts with the logicality of the tasks. To isolate one effect, we found that when illogical outcome materials are paired with a logical outcome photo, subjects choose the illogical materials as the reality to a striking extent (up to 80% for the operational children), irrespective of the task pre- sented first. By contrast, the effect is overwhelming in the conservation task, when the illogical standard materials appear first; otherwise choice between the two conditions is random. We are inclined to interpret this finding as indicating that the materials them- selves compel a judgment of reality, even when the photograph is more logi- cal and the materials are in fact illogi- cal. That is, in a highly logically-loaded task like transitivity, children are in- clined to trust what is materially pres- ent and distrust the photograph. When the task entails more physical knowl- edge, as in the case with conserva- tion, they are relatively more likely to believe in the fidelity of the photo-
graph, especially if the photo appears first. Children's justifications support this interpretation, as do some of the other findings of the study.
A third study, which we consider a pilot study and will be conducted more extensively shortly (Pearlman and Bei- lin), is concerned with what we identify as "iconic realism." In this study we were concerned with when and how children come to an understanding of the properties of the photographic sur- face in contrast to the properties of the object depicted on that surface. The 140 subjects tested were 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. They were presented with photographs of objects, such as, an ice cream cone, a glass of orange juice, a lighted candle, etc. The photographs varied in color (black/white vs. color) and size (near life size vs. small). The children first identified the objects and were then asked whether the object or its photograph would continue to exist if its counterpart were destroyed (or died). Lastly, they had to say whether certain physical properties associated with an object were shared by its photographic counterpart. The ques- tions were of the type "If you got very close to this picture, could you smell the rose?" "If it got very hot in here, would the ice cream cone melt?" "If I touched the picture here, would it feel cold?" etc. The child's responses were rated for indicated iconic realism by whether the child attributed properties to the photo- graph that only the object itself could have. We see this phenomenon as par- allel to that of Piaget's notion of nominal realism in which the child believes that names have properties of the objects they label. The results showed that 80% of the 3-year-olds we tested gave at least 3 iconic realism responses, 30% of the 4-year-olds and 11% of the 5-year-olds. Neither color nor size affected the results.
We interpret these findings as show- ing that children only gradually dis- cover that the photograph has proper- ties of its own (i.e., it is made of paper,
58 Harry Beilin
it tears, etc.) and does not share criti- cal properties with the object it depicts (e.g., has an odor like a flower). At the same time there appears to be a tenta- tiveness about their understanding in- dicated by the fact that only one child who thought the ice cream cone pic- ture would be wet and cold asked if she could taste it.
A fourth study (Kose, Beilin & O'Con- nor, 1980) was concerned with the child's ability to respond to the depic- tion of arrested action in photographs. There were 80 subjects, 3 through 6 years of age, who were asked to imi- tate the actions depicted in a set of 12 black and white photographs. They were also asked to imitate the actions of a live model and provided a verbal description of the photographs. The actions of the model that were depicted were somewhat unusual but generally within the capabilities of the child (e.g., hands on hips; standing on one foot). Their imitations were rated within a range from 0 to 2. For photograph imitations, 3-year-olds had a mean score of .36, 6-year-olds, 1.86, a sig- nificant difference. The live model imi- tation scores were 1.29 for 3-year-olds and the 6-year-old mean was 1.97, a nonsignificant difference. In respect to verbal descriptions, only 52% of the 3-year-olds could verbally identify ac- tions in the photographs in contrast to 94% of the 6-year-olds. Thus, sub- jects were extracting more information from the photographs than they could physically imitate, but at 3 years the ability to recognize and identify action information in photographs was far less than was the case at a later age. We were interested to know, further, whether the difficulty in extracting ac- tion information from photographs was characteristic of other representations. To test this we asked another group of 3- to 5-year-olds to imitate the ac- tions depicted in line drawings and dolls set in the same poses as the pho- tographs. The imitation of both types of representation (drawing and doll)
was superior to that of the photo- graphs, with the imitation of the doll approximating that of the live model. The data of this study indicate that al- though very young children (within the first year) can recognize objects in photographs, the depiction of action is a more complex form of representa- tion and is only progressively achieved. The final study to be mentioned (Pazer & Beilin, in preparation) bears on the relation between photographs and a person's developing self-image. Seventy-five subjects at five age levels were studied: 7, 17, 30, 50 and 75 years. Subjects within each age group were acquainted with one another. Five 4 in. by 5 in. black and white photographs were taken of each sub- ject in different profile views. Each sub- ject, a week later, was shown 14 sets of photographs from that person's age cohort as well as those of him or her- self and was asked to rank them within sets from the most to least attractive. Each subject was then questioned on the relation of the photograph to his or her own attractiveness. Coefficients of concordance between each sub- ject's ranking of his own photographs and the group's ranking of the sub- ject's photographs for attractiveness ranged from .001 for the 7-year-olds to thattof .59 for the 75-year-olds. These data are interpreted as indicative of increasing objective self awareness, in that one's own judgments of attrac- tiveness come into closer accord with others' judgments with increasing age. The reactions of subjects to their own photographs are of particular interest. They show that 93% of the 7-year-old subjects (the youngest) thought their photographs were attractive. Only 53% of the 17-year-olds and 30-year-olds, however, had the same opinions of their photographs, probably indicating greater discrimination in their judg- ments. Only 13% of the 50-year-olds thought their photographs were attrac- tive, reflecting, it would appear, in- creasing displeasure with how their
Photographic Representation 59
physical features are undergoing change. Most subjects in the 75-year- old group did not think of themselves as attractive any longer; however, 87% of them did think they looked as attrac- tive in photographs as they did in reality.
The studies I have described quite briefly do not exhaust the number in which we are engaged, but they give a flavor of the variety of issues with which we are concerned. Basically our interests range from knowledge of how photographs come to acquire meaning for the developing child, how the photograph enters into a system of personal and social conventions, and what I have not described, how the photograph comes to serve an aes- thetic function in the context of the child's understanding.
photographs. Presented at the Sixth Bi- ennial Southwestern Conference on Human Development, Alexandria, Va., April, 1980.
O'Connor, J. Representation and transitiv- ity. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, City University of New York, 1981.
O'Connor, J., Beilin, H. & Kose, G. The effect of media on logical operations. Presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, April, 1981.
Pazer, S. & Beilin, H. The photograph is "me": Effect of photographs on objec- tive self awareness. Submitted for pub- lication.
Snyder, J. Picturing vision. Critical Inquiry, 1980, 6,499-526.
Sontag, S. On photography New York: Far- rar, Straus & Giroux, 1977.
Worth, S. Pictures can't say "ain't." Versus 12, Proceedings of the International Con- ference on Semiotics, Milan, 1981.
References
Arnheim, R. On the nature of photography.
Critical Inquiry, 1974, 1, 149-161. Kose, G., Beilin, H. & O'Connor, J. Children's
comprehension of actions depicted in
Harry Beilin
Graduate School and University Center City University of New York 33 West 42nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036
60 Harry Beilin
PROJECT ZERO: THE EVOLUTION OF VISUAL ARTS RESEARCH DURING THE SEVENTIES
Jessie Lovano-Kerr Indiana University Jean Rush The University of Arizona
Introduction
Aesthetic Education
An artist is a person to whom society often ascribes a certain freedom of spirit, who explores and enjoys the nuances of his or her world, who ex- periences the satisfaction in creative energy by expressing personal feelings and ideas through the disciplined use of words, paint, clay, music, or other media. Young people who exercise their creative and expressive skills will demonstrate those qualities in all as- pects of their adult lives, no matter what their career choices may be. They will recognize and appreciate unique- ness and quality wherever they find it and will become perceptive audiences who enjoy the arts all of their lives. Teaching children to respond aestheti- cally in creating and appreciating art is generally accepted as a major ob- jective in art education.
Educators have had difficulty in specifying the content necessary for the aesthetic education of children during their early years. The concept of aesthetic education was first shaped at the Whitney Museum Conference in 1967, held jointly with the Rhode Island School of Design and coordi- nated by Harlan Hoffa and Manuel Barkan. The conference was one of 17 developmental seminars funded be- tween October, 1964 and November, 1966 by the Arts and Humanities Pro- gram of the U.S. Office of Education, under the direction of Kathryn Bloom. The emphasis placed on research and
deveopment in aesthetic education by Stanley Madeja at CEMREL, Inc., the national education research labora- tory in St. Louis; by Kathryn Bloom through the Arts in Education Pro- gram of the JDR 3rd Fund; and by Howard Gardner at Harvard's Project Zero are direct outgrowths of this con- ference that have influenced art edu- cation through their years of sustained research, theorizing, and policy state- ments pertaining to aesthetic educa- tion. Their goal was making aesthetics and the arts an essential part of every child's formal education (Bloom, 1977).
Project Zero
One of the early Arts and Humanities grants for research in aesthetic edu- cation was awarded in 1966 to Nelson Goodman (Languages of Art, 1968) of the Harvard Graduate School of Edu- cation. Goodman's final report, "Basic Abilities Required for Understanding and Creation in the Arts" (September, 1972), contained seven technical re- ports on topics such as arts in alter- native schools, the theory of symbols, kinds of musical reference, and the lecture-performance as an instrument for audience education (Murphy & Jones, 1976). Goodman's research generated wide interest among arts educators and began an investigation that has continued throughout the de- cade of the seventies under the name of Project Zero.
Project Zero, in its fourteenth year, is unique in art education for its focus,
61
funding, and tenure. When the project began, arts education research was in its infancy. The name was intention- ally whimsical. According to the proj- ect's codirectors, David N. Perkins (The Arts and Cognition, 1977) and Howard Gardner (The Arts and Human Development, 1973; Artful Scribbles, 1980), "the zero reflected our starting point, our pessimistic estimate of the state of general, communicable knowl- edge about arts education. The proj- ect's aim was to attempt a rational study of artistic activity; from such understanding we hope to devise con- crete recommendations for educating keen ears and eyes, creative minds and hands from kindergarten to col- lege" (Perkins & Gardner, 1974, p. 5).
The focus of Project Zero has been the developmental study of artistic growth, central to which was "the ability of persons to use and under- stand various kinds of symbols. We focused on symbol use not only be- cause of its importance in general cog- nition, nor even because of its often- neglected role in artistic process; rather, we held a conviction that, through an intensive exploration of such symbol- ization, fresh insights into the overall educational process might be attained" (Gardner, 1976b). Project Zero's stated research goals were as follows: (1) to analyze and classify the types of symbol systems and symbolic refer- ence characteristic of different art forms; (2) to identify and study experi- mentally the skills and abilities required for the understanding and manipula- tion of art symbols; and (3) to investi- gate methods of nurturing and training those abilities generally and as they bear upon particular arts. Although the ultimate goal is improvement in art edu- cation, emphasis throughout is on long term, basic research, aiming at clarifi- cation of issues, identification of prob- lems, and proposal of hypotheses for testing (Howard, 1971, p. 64).
Project Zero has continued to re- ceive more or less consistent federal funding over the past 10 years from
the U.S. Office of Education, the Na- tional Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Education, either directly or through subcontracts with CEMREL, Inc. This extended assis- tance has enabled Gardner and his associates to conduct longitudinal, developmental research as well as a program of sequential, cross-sectional, time-specific studies of such behaviors as children's perception of painting styles or children's understanding of literary metaphor. Project Zero's con- tinuity distinguishes it from its con- temporaries in art research, most of whom work on a small scale without support from either the government or their colleagues, an unfortunate sit- uation that results in a generally low and inconsistent output.
Gardner, Goodman, Perkins, and their associates at Project Zero have compiled and disseminated a rela- tively broad body of work. Project Zero from the beginning has been an interdisciplinary facility. Its spokes- men have constructed a thoughtful, consistent philosophical and psycho- logical framework integrating litera- ture from diverse fields: cognitive, gestalt, and developmental psychol- ogy; semiotics; philosophy; education; and the arts. Their mentors include Nelson Goodman, Rudolf Arnheim, Otto Rank, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jean Piaget, and Sigmund Freud. Project Zero's multidisciplinary teams of re- searchers have asked questions rele- vant to developmental and to educa- tional processes in the arts, a welcome and innovative effort in both fields. Researchers have consulted the liter- ature in these areas in depth and with considerable insight. They have made applications to the study at hand with a sense of the broad dimensions under- lying this new area and with a gift for synthesizing fragments of knowledge into a comprehensive and appealing design for artistic growth.
The numerous publications from Project Zero range in subject from
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J. Lovano-Kerr, J. Rush
brain damage and aphasia through the study of symbolic learning, metaphoric behavior, and the perception of artistic style. They constitute a coherent body of material that has shaped the direc- tion of research priorities and policy in aesthetic (arts) education to a pro- digious extent over the past 10 years.
The official list of publications from Project Zero for the years 1970-1979 contains 150 articles that have ap- peared in books and journals, six books written, and three books edited by the personnel associated with the project in either single or multiple au- thorship. Of the 150 articles, Gardner et al. published 102; Perkins et al., 29; Goodman, Perkins, and Gardner to- gether, 3; and 16 were written by other associates. Gardner alone wrote five books during that period and edited three more in multiple editorship; Perkins edited a book with a col- league. This is indeed an impressive record of scholarly productivity.
Project Zero's own subject classifi- cation of the 150 articles show that they cluster around the following topics: brain damage, 32; visual arts, 17; aesthetics, 13; visual perception, 13; metaphor, 12; literary arts, 10; early symbolization, 8; developmental theory, 7; artistic development, 7; Project Zero, 7; arts education, 7; music, 6; miscel- laneous theoretical research, 6; crea- tive and problem-solving processes, 3; and miscellaneous experimental re- search, 3.
Project Zero and Visual Arts Education
The education of visual artists tradi- tionally has been undertaken by artists, and this tradition outdates the investi- gation of artistic learning by psychol- ogists and educators from other disci- plines. Empirical research in the visual arts dates from the end of World War II. All art researchers, including those at Project Zero, have borrowed proce- dures and philosophical models from
allied fields. Some of them have proved appropriate and some cumbersome when applied to the visual arts.
The primary spokesmen for Project Zero hale from outside the profession known as art education. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to hear that their research interests and those of art educators have often overlapped but have not always had the same focus. Because of Project Zero's prominent interest in the visual arts, its unique governmental research support, and its demonstrated influence on visual art education policy during the past 10 years, a brief review of Project Zero's publications that touch on the visual arts may clarify the nature of its contributions, as well as point up the discrepancy between its interests and those of some other art education re- searchers. Such an examination has not yet appeared in the art education literature.
In this paper we review selected pub- lications by Project Zero personnel. The review will focus on literature re- lated to children's artistic development in four areas: (1) responding to art; (2) making art; (3) symbol use; and (4) cultural influences. We have based our comments on a survey of the litera- ture dealing primarily with normal pop- ulations, that treat all of the arts and the visual arts in particular, and on evaluations of Project Zero's progress. This is only about a third of the Proj- ect's total publications. We have not dealt extensively with the theoretical or philosophical constructs underlying Project Zero research nor, except in certain particulars, with the careful attempts to articulate broad models of artistic development.
Although Project Zero grew from the work of Nelson Goodman and his philosophical contributions are evi- dent, Howard Gardner has clearly set the pace and direction of Project Zero with his, his associates', and his stu- dents' research and the conclusions drawn from them. Gardner's particular
Project Zero: Evolution of Research 63
interest in the visual arts is evident by the amount of his published work in this area. The following remarks, there- fore, will apply most directly to Gard- ner's books and articles included in the list of references.
Responding to Art
Thirteen of the surveyed journal arti- cles examine children's responses to viewing a work of art (Gardner, 1970a, 1970b, 1971, 1972a, 1972b, 1972c, 1974; Gardner & Gardner, 1970, 1973; Gard- ner, Winner, & Kircher, 1975; Rosen- stiel, Morison, Silverman, & Gardner, 1978; Silverman, Winner, & Gardner, 1976; Silverman, Winner, Rosenstiel, & Gardner, 1975). This is a sequential series; six of the 13 are progressive empirical research studies that docu- ment children's sensitivity to painting style, children's conceptions of the arts, their development of critical judg- ment, and the role of texture in picture perception. This research has led Proj- ect Zero researchers to construct a cohesive view of children's develop- ing visual capabilities when confront- ing complex figures such as artworks and to identify features of the pro- cesses involved. Although the first study simply attempted to ascertain children's classificatory behavior and degree of flexibility at varying develop- mental levels, questions raised there led to the formulation of subsequent experimental tasks that explored the effects of training on style sensitivity. This depth of focus is unique in art education research and deserves our commendation for setting an example of continuity, productivity, and contri- bution to our knowledge of children's artistic behavior.
Style Sensitivity
To assign a painting to an artist on the basis of style, a viewer must recognize certain properties or dimensions that the works of one artist have in common.
Since each painting is an intricate entity containing a distinct pattern of relationships between its elements, verbalization of style dimensions often inadequately describes the visual experience (cf. Arnheim, 1969; Schapiro, 1972). Some researchers in- dependent of Project Zero have sug- gested that adults and children can learn to make successful style judg- ments (Bengston, Schoeller, & Cohen 1979; DePorter & Kavanaugh, 1979 Rush, 1979; Tighe, 1968; Walk, 1967 Walk, Karusaitis, Lebowitz, & Falbo, 1971), but most have studied adults and none has pursued the matter so consistently as Gardner and his asso- ciates.
Gardner operationalized style sen- sitivity as "the ability to group to- gether works produced by one artist" (1972c, p. 326). Most of the tasks re- quired children to sort picture-post- card-sized reproductions of paintings or, on one occasion, to view slides made from these reproductions. Sen- sitivity was measured by children's ability to choose an example of a painter's work from an array of four reproductions, one of which was by the target artist and three by other painters; or children were asked to pair two pictures by one artist despite misleading cues. Subjects were upper to lower middle class children enrolled in schools in the suburban Boston area.
In his first study Gardner (1970a) tested 20 first-graders (6-year-olds), 20 third-graders (8-year-olds), 20 sixth- graders (11/12-year-olds), and 20 ninth- graders (14-year-olds) to determine their sensitivity to individual painting style. Gardner trained the children to observe two works by one artist and then to choose one work by the same artist contained in an array of four reproductions. For testing, children repeated this task 20 times, receiving reinforcement or corrective feedback on four of the early trials. By his choice of reproductions Gardner attempted to
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determine whether subject matter would provide a miscue. Five arrays contained no recognizable subject matter (abstractions), five contained homogeneous subject matter (portraits of individuals), and 10 contained het- erogeneous subject matter.
When subject matter was either con- trolled (portraits) or absent (abstrac- tions), children of all ages sorted by style. However, the adolescent chil- dren (ninth-graders) displayed signifi- cantly more sensitivity than all of the preadolescents on items containing a variety of subjects; younger children were misled by details of the subject and mistook them for style cues. Gard- ner observed that the ninth-graders may have profited from prior exposure to art and that the younger children may have misinterpreted the task. He acknowledged that the older children performed better because they already had a concept of style as features unique to the work of one individual, but initially he ascribed this to develop- mental changes occurring between the sixth and ninth grades.
Since first- and sixth-graders were equally misled by various subject mat- ter miscues in the beginning study, Gardner modified the original task in a subsequent experiment with first- graders (6-year-olds) and sixth-grad- ers (12-year-olds). To minimize the misleading effects of subject matter, Gardner added one test in which chil- dren identified the original stimulus cards turned upside down, and one in which they used the original cards from which he had removed mislead- ing examples during training; chil- dren viewed the more typical work of each artist, instead of two works as they had before. The younger and older children again displayed similar diffi- culty with subject miscues on the origi- nal task. The sixth-graders, however, demonstrated significantly more style sensitivity than the first-graders in the two modified conditions. Sixth-grade girls outperformed boys, replicating a
finding seen in the first study with that age group. Gardner concluded that the modifications drew the children's at- tention away from the subject matter and improved their focus on features germaine to style recognition such as color, texture, and composition. Gard- ner ascribed the superior performance of the older children, especially the girls, to developmental changes asso- ciated with the start of adolescence.
Gardner and Gardner (1970) then re- examined style sensitivity on a task containing deliberate subject miscues. Working with first-graders (6-year- olds), sixth-graders (11-year-olds), and college sophomores (19-year-olds), they asked subjects to sort cards con- taining four painting reproductions, two by one artist and two by a second. Each pair by each artist contained the same subject matter. In the first task subjects were to group together the cards that they found most similar; in the second they were to group the cards according to artist (by style). Stu- dents of all ages successfully grouped by subject matter, a strategy that the authors interpreted as the more natu- ral tendency and the tendency more reinforced by cultural factors. The youngest children again were unable to ignore subject matter when in- structed to group according to artist (painting style). The ability of older subjects to sort by style was taken to indicate their felxibility, alertness to instructions, and awareness that a person may leave consistent traces throughout his works even though manifest subjects matter and figure are basically altered. Appar- ently the youngest subjects are lacking in one or more of these capacities. The initial study did indicate that when sub- ject matter was not available as a mis- cue, young subjects responded much like older ones. Thus it is conceivable that younger subjects have the poten- tial to perceive style but that they are impeded by their proclivity toward not- ing subject matter and deeming it a sufficient (or even a necessary) basis
Project Zero: Evolution of Research 65
for classification. In addition, instruc- tions referring to works by a painter may well be devoid of meaning for young children; in efforts currently underway to train children to sort by style rather than by dominant figure, verbal instructions have been avoided (p. 15).
No sex differences were noted at any age level.
Gardner (1972a) then set out to deter- mine whether second-graders (7-year- olds) and fifth-graders (10-year-olds) could learn to sort painting reproduc- tions successfully according to style despite misleading subject matter cues. Gardner hypothesized that either younger children performed less well than older ones because of a deficit in operational thinking, in which case a training program would be ineffec- tive, or younger children had diffi- culty making use of information al- ready at their disposal, in which case training might reveal considerable style sensitivity.
Children sorted sets of four painting reproductions, two by one artist and two by another. Each set of four con- tained two pairs, each pair having one painting by each artist that shared ob- vious subject matter (figural prop- erties). The sets were controlled to minimize other cues based on color, size, medium, etc. Children received, at weekly intervals, a pretest, seven sessions of unspecified length to prac- tice sorting paintings either by sub- ject or by style, a repetition of the pre- test as a posttest, and then a repetition of the posttest with instructions to sort according to the alternate criterion. The younger children also took four of Piaget's tests of concrete opera- tional thought.
Training produced a high level of sensitivity in both age groups, al- though the fifth-graders performed significantly better than the second- graders. Concrete operations ap- peared unnecessary for stylistic sen- sitivity among the younger children,
most of whom sorted well by style but had not yet reached the stage of con- crete operations. No performance differences occurred that were re- lated to the sex of the participants. The criterion reversal test revealed that older children who learned to sort by subject matter also could sort by style as well as those trained to do so, but that the first-graders could not.
Gardner concluded that "style sen- sitivity may be more closely related to discrimination learning or to the discovery of distinctive features than to class inclusion or conservation" (p. 613). He noted that "a training paradigm can alter the basis on which [children] group works of art" (p. 614), and he continued to surmise that the superior performance of the older children appeared due to "the devel- opmental changes which occur dur- ing the pre-adolescent period" (p. 614).
The training study allowed Gardner to observe that the strategies used in style sorting focused "on the material within the picture, disregarded] the most obvious figural aspects, and at- tended] to corrections" (p. 613). Global impressions seemed important, and texture appeared to be a signifi- cant style cue, a finding that Gardner later confirmed experimentally (1972b). Gardner hypothesized (after Lorenz, 1966) that "pre-adolescents can form Gestalten for certain artists, styles, or textures" (p. 613) by focusing on the essential attributes of a class of stimuli. Gardner distinguished in particular between sensitivity to objects and sen- sitivity to persons. Until middle childhood, sensitivity to objects appears to dominate over sen- sitivity to persons, regardless of the nature of the instructions or task. . . . one can classify consistently by style (rather than by subject matter or domi- nant figure) only when one is, in some sense, aware that a person can leave traces of his own behavior in a variety of places and ways. I also propose that response to aesthetic objects rests in
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part on the knowledge that they were made by, and expressive of, individuals (Gardner, 1971, pp. 519-520).
A subsequent training study by Silverman, Winner, Rosenstiel, and Gardner (1975) sought "to determine the steps through which children pass in learning to sort paintings by style" (p. 373) and to examine the effect of style learning on drawing. Assuming that preadolescent children are char- acteristically insensitive to stylistic properties without training, the au- thors confronted the question of how style sensitivity might relate to other cognitive, perceptual, and artistic ca- pacities. A secondary investigation concerned whether or not a concept of style is best acquired by seeing a broad range of periods and artists or by seeing fewer periods and artists but more examples of each.
After an initial pretest to determine style sensitivity and drawing ability, four groups of fifth-grade children (10- year-olds) received the following treat- ments: two groups learned to sort painting reproductions according to style of individual artist, one by look- ing at a wide number of artists and periods (extensive training) and one by looking at a limited number (inten- sive training); one group learned to recognize pictures of closely related animals; a control group received no training at all. Following treatments, all children took an extensive and an intensive style-sensitivity posttest us- ing Western painting reproductions similar to those used in training; a posttest classifying animal pictures; a style-sensitivity posttest using non- Western painting reproductions; and a drawing test.
On the extensive posttest both the intensive-trained and the extensive- trained children recognized individual painting styles significantly better than the animal-trained and control-group children, with girls performing better than boys. There was no significant performance difference between the
extensive and intensive training groups, and members of the animal training group performed only mini- mally better than children used as con- trols. On the intensive posttest, how- ever, the intensive-trained children were more sensitive to style than were children in any of the other groups, indicating that "intensive training with a few salient painting styles emerges as a more potent regimen than train- ing with a wide variety of styles" (p. 378). Some changes were seen in post- test drawings produced by children who studied painting styles, chiefly in more varied use of texture, color ef- fects, and use of light and shadow, al- though the results here were not par- ticularly strong. One reason might be the confusion reported among the chil- dren concerning observed differences between "the small untextured repro- ductions used in the study and actual paintings" (p. 380).
Responding to Art: Some Critical Observations
Gardner's reports of these first four style studies emphasize developmental patterns, an interpretation of the data that, we suggest, may profit from fur- ther scrutiny. Certain effects ascribed to developmental changes actually may be due to the influence of research methodology, such as the tasks or training used, the kind and use of visual stimuli, and method of eliciting children's verbal responses; or to the effects of environmental factors, such as children's cultural backgrounds, exposure to mass media, or formal education.
Training. The first study on style (Gardner, 1970a) suggested that young children, but not older ones, charac- teristically classify paintings accord- ing to subject rather than style, a con- clusion stated as an axiom in most of Gardner's subsequent work. This age group later overcame that tendency as a result of training (Gardner, 1972a).
Project Zero: Evolution of Research 67
Since we know that untrained adults, although capable of style distinctions, recognize individual styles only after training (Rush, 1979), and that subject matter also poses misleading cues for adolescents (Gardner, 1974), lack of sensitivity to style seems consistent in all untrained subjects despite age. Concluding that young children's sort- ing preferences for subject matter dif- fer in any respect from adults' prefer- ences, or that these preferences are a developmental phenomenon, appears unwarranted on the basis of Gardner's own research. Despite evidence to the contrary, the assumption that young children are insensitive to style con- tinues to figure conspicuously in Gard- ner's recent work.
It seems likely that the so-called in- sensitivity of the younger children in Gardner's early studies, particularly the first three, resulted from the fact that they were operating without the benefit of training. In the first study (Gardner, 1970a), children examined two examples of one artist's work be- fore selecting a third on the basis of style, and they received feedback dur- ing the early part of the test. Given later findings that young children per- formed well with more adequate train- ing, it might be said that the first study used an inefficient training paradigm that penalized younger, less experi- enced subjects by allowing the prior education of older children, whether formal or informal, to influence the results. Style concepts are learned by seeing examples, and, as Silverman and her associates (1975) suggested, learned best by exposure to many ex- amples of the same style (intensive training). Style training in the initial study was ineffective also in the sense that, as Gardner observed, the younger children did not possess the concept of style as features unique to one individual.
All of the first three studies (Gardner, 1 970a, 1 970b; Gardner & Gardner, 1 970) are deficient in these same areas. In
Gardner's 1972a training experiment, on the other hand, young children learned both the concept of style and concepts of individual painting styles. The criterion reversal test suggested that the experience of older children remained an advantage in this condi- tion, since training in the alternative way of sorting was minimal.
Given this evidence of the variable effects of training, developmental in- terpretation of these data seems ill advised until training paradigms have been refined so that their influence may be identified and sifted out. Gard- ner, however, has constructed later experiments around developmental hypotheses derived from these four studies, apparently with little critical evaluation of his research design even when confronted by his own data. Sub- sequent work has failed to come to grips with this essential defect.
Visual Stimuli. The visual stimuli used in all of the style studies, with the possible exception of those in the study on children's conceptions of the arts (Gardner et al., 1975), have been 3x5-inch color reproductions of paint- ings. Their limitations also may have affected children's performance on style recognition tasks. Calling these reproductions paintings, for example, may have caused some misunderstand- ing on the part of the children to whom they were shown. Silverman et al. (1975) reported that many children "seemed confused about the differ- ence between the small untextured reproductions used in the study and actual paintings" (p. 30), but that their confusion subsided as training pro- gressed. Although this issue is not discussed anywhere in the Project Zero literature reviewed, in reporting the results of all of the studies the authors frequently refer to the stimuli as paint- ings, an inaccurate use of the word confusing to their readers as well as to their experimental subjects. It is conceivable that children in all of the studies from 1970 on, expecially the
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younger ones, misunderstood this mis- leading term. Older children could be expected to know that the painting to which the experimenter referred was a much larger real object represented by the 3x5 reproduction used in the identification task. Younger children apparently had difficulty making the distinction. In Project Zero's recent study of critical judgment (Rosenstiel, Morrison, Silverman, & Gardner, 1978) a third-grader, observing the 3x5 pic- ture, remarked "it's hard to paint things so small" (p. 100).
An example of the ambiguity that these mislabeled reproductions caused occurs in the later study of children's conceptions of the arts. Gardner, Win- ner, and Kircher (1975) reported that the youngest group, "When presented with a painting and asked to explain where it came from" (p. 65), answered "the factory, ... a store, a book, a school, a camera" (p. 65). All of these responses describe reproductions. The authors, however, considered them to be immature and concluded that "the human origin of a painting was not apparent to these children" (p. 65), and that they had "fundamental mis- conceptions about art" (p. 64). Whether the children viewed reproductions or actual paintings is unclear, since the authors cited prior studies in which the term painting had been used con- sistently to refer to reproductions. The authors stated that young children have "succeeded in . . . grouping paint- ings by style" (p. 60) and that a "young child who can look closely at two Im- pressionist paintings and detect fine textural differences between a Renoir and a Bonnard [a reference to post- card-sized-reproductions] may reveal, when questioned, startling misconcep- tions about what a work of art is, how it is made, or what distinguishes it from a machine-made or a natural ob- ject" (p. 60). If Gardner et al. used re- productions, they misinterpreted the children's answers; if they used real
paintings, their inaccurate use of lan- guage obscured that important infor- mation.
In addition one must question the meaning of children's responses to reproductions as small as 3x5 inches and the validity of generalizing from them to responses that would be gen- erated by a real artwork. Visual quality suffers in any small reproduction, and the size disparity between Gardner's stimuli and most real paintings is large. Evidence of these visual misinterpreta- tions suggests a weakness in the early works needing further interpretation and correction. Children's responses on future tasks assessing aesthetic qual- ities might differ if investigators were to employ real paintings or, at least, high quality color slides projected close to actual size.
The study comparing intensive and extensive training (Silverman et al., 1975) touched on yet another facet of style recognition and stimulus use without identifying it as such. Some paintings are more typical of a style than others, that is, they contain more style information. Paintings from one artist (Picasso) vary along this dimen- sion as well as paintings from one cul- tural style (Cubism). Adults have greater difficulty in recognizing some works that others (Rush & Sabers, Note 1), which suggests that the examples selected can facilitate or hinder style learning. Project Zero researchers mentioned this variable but neither attempted to control it nor discussed it as a possible source of error.
Prior Experience. Project Zero re- searchers seldom mention either the educational environment of its sub- jects or the findings of other research on the efficacy of teaching in the visual arts. The study of children's concep- tions of the arts (Gardner et al., 1975) is such a case. Gardner and his asso- ciates showed children a work of visual art (whether real or reproduced is un- clear), read them a poem, or played
Project Zero: Evolution of Research
69
them recorded music. Interviewers then asked the children questions de- signed to elicit unbiased answers, such as "Where did it come from? What else might you call it? Did you like it?" (p. 62) and stressed to the children that there were no right or wrong re- sponses.
By questioning 121 children ranging from 4 to 16 years of age, the authors identified broad patterns or stages of thought at three age levels. "There was a set of 'immature' responses found among 54 four- to seven-year-olds, an- other set of 'intermediate' or 'transi- tional' responses found among the 58 eight- to twelve-year-olds, and a final set of 'mature' responses found among the 16 fourteen- to sixteen-year-olds. The authors view[ed] each set of re- sponses as representing a certain cog- nitive stage and as having certain basic characteristics or properties" (Rosario, 1977, p. 93). Gardner et al. identified these stages of thought as neither taught nor imitated, but considered them spontaneous constructions at certain developmental levels. Because of the consistency of subject responses to specific questions, they concluded that there is a "substantial universal component in children's artistic con- ception" (p. 75).
This conclusion ignores possible effects of the children's experience (or lack of it). Gardner and his asso- ciates recognized that children's con- ceptions of the arts may not reflect "the way in which they think about the world in general" (p. 74) because the arts "pose problems which seem to be non-generalizable ones" (p. 74), such as diverse media, each with its own characteristics; the contrast be- tween children's lack of direct fine arts experiences and their greater fa- miliarity with the physical and moral universe; art experiences mediated by mass technology; parental prejudices about art as either elitist or recrea- tional; and the prevalent bias among untrained adults that the arts are too
sophisticated and therefore beyond understanding. Nowhere do the au- thors address these issues.
Formal education is bound to influ- ence children's responses in research situations. Unlike academic subjects, art as a course of study is inconsistent. Recognition of this fluctuation of prior art experiences is crucial to interpret any data on artistic development. Older children, for example, gave responses that implied personal acquaintance with art concepts and skills that could reflect training under an art specialist, a typical learning situation in junior and senior high schools. At the ele- mentary level, however, most art ex- periences are designed and taught by classroom teachers who have limited art background. Since few art text- books or mandated curricula are used in the elementary school, there is little content or pedagogical consistency across elementary school populations. The youngest subjects in this study, therefore, may have had less exposure to art than the older children. Artistic development should be considered in terms of the opportunities a child has to learn.
Rosario (1977) critiqued the study on children's conceptions of the arts from an ethnomethodological point of view. Rosario also doubted that the data allowed Gardner et al. to infer the existence of congitive stages, let alone whether they are spontaneous con- structions. He pointed out that the study was designed not to collect data on how children acquire knowledge of the arts but, rather, to investigate what children think about the arts. Rosario examined the questions used in the interviewing process from the perspective of how the children might have interpreted them. He noted that Gardner's questions "Where do you think it came from?" and "How do you think it was made?" implied possible locations and processes of re- production. Thus, if the children in Gard- ner's youngest group gave responses
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such as 'factory,' store,' 'school,' or 'you pick up a crayon and draw,' it is a questionable claim that these children exhibited misconceptions' as to the identity and production of works of art. The children's responses fall within a range of conceivable answers, and if we take into account what is implicit in the questions, they do make sense ... To conclude, on the basis of the responses alone, that the selections are functions of a cognitive stage of devel- opment is unwarranted, to say the least (p. 98).
Rosario suggested that Project Zero investigators assumed children were correctly interpreting their questions, and as a result they expected them to demonstrate the same kind of re- sponses adults would give; when they didn't, their answers were labeled mis- conceptions.
The final Project Zero documenta- tion of children's responses to art de- scribes the development of critical judgment in the visual arts (Rosenstiel, Morrison, Silverman, & Gardner, 1978). Interviewers questioned first-, third-, sixth-, and tenth-graders to determine the extent to which children of different ages can distinguish among standards of personal preference, community values, and technical competence applied to painting reproductions. This study exhibits most of the characteristics of the study on chil- dren's conceptions of the arts and, therefore, contains defects similar to those we have already described re- garding the nature of the questions and stimuli used, their interpretations by various age groups, and the leap from data to developmental inferences and pedagogical recommendations. First-graders, for example, had diffi- culty discriminating differences among the three kinds of questions, which suggests some misunderstanding.
Most art criticism models stress a broader range of analyses and a more objective approach than that used by Project Zero. They begin with observ- ing surface qualities of artworks and
proceed to analyzing and interpreting formal aspects and, finally, to evalu- ating or making critical judgments. Hickey (Note 2) used Feldman's model to determine whether children aged five to fourteen had the perceptual and conceptual abilities necessary to respond appropriately within each cat- egory (Description, Formal Analysis, Interpretation, and Evaluation). Hickey derived her list of perceptual and cog- nitive abilities from the research of Piaget, Bruner, Arnheim, and Werner. She found that children with no prior training in art appreciation or art criti- cism possessed these abilities in vary- ing degrees at different developmental levels. Hickey also found that levels of development were independent of age. These results and conclusions con- trast with those of Rosenstiel et al., who suggest a developmental pattern and who believe that their study pro- vides normative developmental infor- mation with educational implications. Answering the questions on personal preference, community values, and technical competence is different from making critical judgments; yet Rosen- stiel et al. generalize from the former to the latter. Their rationale here seems tenuous when compared to other seri- ous efforts in the same area.
Making Art
Several of the Project Zero publica- tions reviewed dealt with the artistic process in the sense of creating visual art (Carothers & Gardner, 1979; Gard- ner, 1980; Rosenstiel & Gardner, 1977; Silverman, Winner, Rosenstiel, & Gard- ner, 1975; Wolf & Gardner, Note 3). Proect Zero's investigation into the creative process is more recent and the research literature therefore less comprehensive than that on style sen- sitivity.
The focus of Project Zero on chil- dren's creative growth reflects Gard- ner's developmental orientation. In Artful Scribbles (1980), for example,
Project Zero: Evolution of Research 71
Gardner offers a picture of graphic development similar to others' obser- vations of children's drawing (e.g., Golomb, 1977; Goodnow, 1977; Kel- logg, 1969; Lowenfeld, 1947), i.e., pro- ceeding from scribbles, through man- dalas, to the systematic depiction of entities (tadpole figures) and the sub- sequent increase of expressiveness and complexity that may continue, in some cases, throughout adolescence into adulthood. Gardner believes that this pattern is common to children of all cultures and that intervention can speed up or slow down the develop- mental process, but cannot qualita- tively alter the basic developmental sequence.
Although Gardner's work is signifi- cant within the context of aesthetic education as well as artistic develop- ment, these two areas are not synony- mous. Gardner prefers basic research (Gardner, 1977) leading to "a definition of the 'end state' of artistic competence [and] an outline of developmental stages culminating in such compe- tence" (p. 31).
Art education researchers, on the other hand, are apt to value the effects on the developing child wrought by experience, especially in the percep- tual and motor skills peculiar to the creative process in the visual arts. Edu- cators strive to implement the aesthetic development of individuals of all ages. In their view, understanding develop- mental patterns may prevent inappro- priate intervention, but does not obvi- ate the need to organize effective experiential patterns to implement, en- hance, or perhaps even alter growth. Gardner's education goal in not "to speed up' attainment of competency, but rather to make available to an indi- vidual the fullest set of examples, prob- lems, and themes for which he will be searching at a particular stage in de- velopment" (Gardner, 1977, p. 34). If a person without language instruction may develop into an illiterate, a person without visual arts instruction may
grow into a visual illiterate. Both camps apparently believe that without opportunities to exercise creativity, a child may become an adult whose de- velopmental potential is unrealized (cf. McFee, 1970).
In Artful Scribbles Gardner has ver- bally and visually examined the char- acteristic graphic images that children make, from their first manipulation of marking tools through adolescence. He relates these manifestations to other developmental traits, thereby elucidating visual artistic expression as representative childhood behavior. Gardner's studies overlap both edu- cation and psychology, and the suc- cess of his publication indicates that many practitioners in each field are unread in the basic literature of the other. Gardner correctly sees this mu- tual ignorance as a stumbling block for both art and psychology re- searchers.
Gardner seldom cites the art educa- tion literature on either creating or re- sponding to art, although a consider- able amount exists that is related to his work, some of it quite sophisti- cated. As a result Gardner appears either unaware of or disinterested in many contemporary issues in the pro- fession. Children's artistic growth has been discussed frequently during the past 10 years in art education litera- ture. Studies documenting the positive effects of instruction on the art per- formance of children as young as two years (Douglas & Schwartz, 1967; Du- bin, 1946; Kannegieter, 1971) present a different viewpoint from Gardner, who regards the natural unfolding of artistic development as inviolable (Gardner, 1976b) and who implies that intervention is a negative influence.
Gardner and his colleagues (Silver- man et al., 1975), in fact, have noted positive effects of style learning on children's drawings in such formal aspects as color and texture use. Rosenstiel and Gardner (1977) studied first-, third-, sixth-, and tenth-graders'
72 J. Lovano-Kerr, J. Rush
performance on a drawing task to ascertain whether an observed decline in artistic skills during childhood might be due to the advent of formal mental operations in adolescents, specifically the increase in their critical capabili- ties. Rosenstiel and Gardner found that older children who viewed more proficient drawings upon completion of their own first drawing took more care on their second. Older children often evaluated their own drawings in a negative way, even though their com- petency (skill level) increased with age. The authors suggested that preadoles- cents "do not receive sufficient intro- duction to the practice of constructive criticism, and that the 'sudden out- break' of critical awareness cripples their productive output. Should this be so, it would seem advisable to de- velop exercises which would introduce subjects gently to the practice of criti- cism" (p. 42). Yet, because of the judged decline in flavorfulness during adolescence, observed also in two ear- lier studies of children's sensitivity to musical styles and children's literary skills (Gardner, 1973b; Gardner & Gard- ner, 1971), the authors hypothesized that "artistic sensitivity may attain a high point in our society in the pre- adolescent years" (p. 42). This con- clusion may be premature given the arbitrary nature of the criterion (flavor- fulness), the training effects observed in the study, and the little evidence to demonstrate that behaviors character- istic of one art form will generalize to another.
Making Art: Some Critical Observations
Studies on artistic process are of great interest to art educators, who are above all committed to the process they teach. The core of visual arts edu- cation is art. Most adults in our so- ciety, uneducated in the visual arts, remain visually insensitive to some de- gree to the formal relationships in a
work of art. This visual illiteracy ap- parently has no relation to their intel- ligence or educational level, although it often affects their preferences for certain art objects. Many psychologists who have studied the visual arts have displayed a lack of sensitivity to the visual material with which they dealt; this impairment has affected the de- sign of their experiments and the con- clusions drawn from them. The study published recently in Developmental Psychology by Carothers and Gardner entitled "When Children's Drawings Become Art: The Emergence of Aes- thetic Production and Perception" (1979) has certain weaknesses in this respect.
In this experiment children com- pleted drawings that varied along two dimensions, syntactic repleteness and expression (metaphorical exemplifica- tion), two of four characteristics iden- tified by Goodman (1968) as observ- able in aesthetic works. The children later identified correct completions of the same drawings provided by the experimenter. Carothers and Gardner measured repleteness according to the quality of line used to indicate the contour of a form within a picture (thick vs. thin lines, termed brightness; varied thickness vs. uniform thickness of lines), and the kind of lines used to indicate shading of a form within a picture (horizontal bars vs. cross- hatching). They measured expression according to whether an entire picture expressed (as contrasted to repre- sented) either the emotion of happi- ness or sadness.
Carothers and Gardner pointed out in their introduction that "although all drawing occurs in an artistic me- dium, not all drawings make use of the fundamental aesthetic character- istics of the medium and, therefore, not all drawings are necessarily works of art" (p. 570). They graphically de- scribed a replete line as one providing "the outline of Mount Fujiyama, with every variation in thickness, bright-
Project Zero: Evolution of Research 73
ness, and shading relevant to its inter- pretation" (p. 571), and they recognized that a drawing of a person who looks sad "need not express sadness; such an expression may instead be con- veyed by the use of certain colors (often dark), properties of line (droop- ing), and the like" (p. 571).
Unfortunately, Carothers and Gard- ner used visual materials in their ex- periment that exemplified few of their verbal observations. They elicited chil- dren's production or perception of repleteness by using drawings in which the lines were not replete. The lines did not vary in thickness or thinness in response to the contour that they depicted, but were merely thick or thin, varied or uniform, with no con- cern for requirements of the visual statement. The examples of shading exhibited the same mistakes, and in addition provided other misleading cues, e.g., not all bars in the pictures modeling horizontal bars were hori- zontal; some were vertical and some, oblique. The drawings that modeled expression actually represented an emotion of happiness or sadness through what may be called the literary or symbolic aspect, so that the sun shone in a cloudless sky in the happy picture, but in the sad picture the sky was filled with dark clouds. Neither the happy nor the sad picture ex- pressed an emotional content through any of the formal elements such as line, color, compositional variety, or so on.
All of the drawings used in Caroth- ers's and Gardner's experiment em- ployed obvious visual stereotypes. None was a work of adult art and none was an authentic child's drawing. All were noticeably lacking in aesthetic qual- ity. If repleteness and expression were present in these drawings, as indicated by the authors, they cannot be sympto- matic of aesthetic quality. On the other hand, if repleteness and expression were not present, the drawings were inappropriate stimuli for the experi- ment described.
Symbol Use
Symbol development and use by the young child has been a central inter- est of Project Zero from the onset; the three visual arts studies on this sub- ject have been undertaken fairly re- cently, however. Whereas the earlier series of cross-sectional studies on style sensitivity progressively changed experimental treatments, the studies on symbol formation used the same experimental tasks for different pop- ulations (infancy to fifth grade) within both cross-sectional and longitudinal structures. The first, a longitudinal study of five first-born infants, is still in progress and results are unavailable (Gardner, Wolf, & Smith, 1975). The second is a cross-sectional study of nursery school children aged 21/2 to 5 (Gardner, 1976a). The third is a com- bined cross-sectional, longitudinal study of children initially aged 5 to 8, who were subsequently retested for two more years (Ives, Silverman, Kelly, & Gardner, 1979).
The common core of inquiry in the two completed symbol-development studies consists of five related issues: simultaneity of symbol system emer- gence; the order of emergence and the differences and factors involved; the universality of stages in symbol system mastery; the factors involved in observed wide differences in sym- bol skill and preferences; and method- ological issues regarding the identifi- cation of specific process behaviors (Gardner, 1976a).
Each child performed four tasks for each of three symbol media (language, drawing, and clay), with the addition of a symbolic play task for children aged 21/2 to 5. Each child produced a spontaneous product, completed a work left incomplete by the experi- menter, assembled a work from several parts, and produced "as faithfully as possible a work or performance ex- hibited by the experimenter" (Gard- ner et al., 1975, p. 15). The spontane-
74 J. Lovano-Kerr, J. Rush
ous tasks were repeated for two more years with children who were initially tested in kindergarten, first, and third grades (Ives et al., 1979).
There were five general findings for the nursery school (2V2- to 5-year-old) children (Gardner, 1976a): (1) tremen- dous individual differences within age groups; (2) sex differences in media and symbol use; (3) an improvement with age in overall flexibility; (4) an understanding of media, task situa- tion, and the capacity to elaborate; and (5) a characteristic approach to tasks. The copying task produced the most anxiety, while the assembly task produced the least. Fixed themes in children's drawings also were noted, such as Batman, the Yellow Subma- rine, and Oscar the Grouch. Specula- tion regarding this phenomenon was two-pronged: on the one hand, the re- turn to a familiar theme could repre- sent a necessary element in artistic growth, since variations could be ex- plored; on the other hand, fixed themes could be inhibiting for some children, preventing further explorations and changes. The origins of the fixed themes were not discussed by the authors. Perhaps the strong influence of popular culture on children at very early ages is a given and, therefore, assumed to be implicit in artistic per- formance.
Gardner (1976a) drew implications from the study of nursery school chil- dren in relation to the five focal issues previously identified. He found that a child's symbol system often did not develop simultaneously. Moreover, each level of symbol use seemed to be contingent on certain prerequisites, which, once fulfilled, generalized across a variety of media. No fixed order of symbol emergence was evi- dent, and mastery of individual sym- bol systems appeared to differ notice- ably among children. Some showed very advanced verbal abilities while others of the same age seemed to pre- fer the visual and design features of
media such as drawing. These striking differences were found among chil- dren as young as two and three years old.
Patterns of consistent behavior among individual children, however, were noted across tasks. Assessment of commonalities and individual differ- ences found in this study required the combining of two divergent psycho- logical constructs, the cognitive and the affective. Accordingly, children's products, evaluated for technical com- petence, were categorized on the basis of developmental level or mental age, reflecting the view of the cognitivist. The affective approach was used to assess the distinctive qualities of chil- dren's products and performance.
Gardner (1976a) proposed the con- cept of cognitive style to account for "the particular way in which each child realizes the universal properties of symbolization at his level of devel- opment" (p. 18). Specifically, cognitive style referred to patterns of symbol- ization behavior of children described in somewhat dichotomous terms. Chil- dren identified as verbalizers tended to talk more than to produce art works; their counterparts, visualizers, were active producers and were reluctant to talk. Self-starters approached tasks effortlessly; completers exhibited anxi- ety when first starting a task, but not when the task required completion only. The person-centered child was more socially oriented and focused on communication and used figures in graphic expression; the object-cen- tered child was more private and tended to draw objects (physical ele- ments, machines). Gardner used the concept of cognitive style to reconcile differences between universal devel- opment stages and individual behav- iors when confronted with evidence from the nursery school study that revealed strikingly individual uses of symbol and media by young children at the same age and level of skill. The examination of the relation between cog-
Project Zero: Evolution of Research 75
nitive style and symbol formation and use, if extended longitudinally from preschool through the elementary and secondary levels, could be a major contribution to the literature on artistic development and a valuable extension of Gardner's developmental model.
A move in this direction seems to appear in the third study on symbol development of 45 children from kin- dergarten, first, and third grades (Ives et al., 1979). The content and format of these experimental tasks were iden- tical to those administered to pre- schoolers, except for the elimination of symbolic play and the addition of a retest situation in which the same subjects completed the spontaneous product tasks for two more years. Each product was assessed on the basis of competence (skill level), flavor- fulness (elaborative and expressive use of elements) and uniqueness (unusual arrangements and embellishments).
Symbolic competence increased witn age; the rate was not the same for all ages, however. Different developmen- tal patterns appeared in each art form. Competence, uniqueness, and flavor- fulness in storytelling increased stead- ily from kindergarten to fourth grade, showing a slight decline at fifth grade. This pattern was not found in drawing and clay, where competence, unique- ness, and flavorfulness increased from kindergarten to first grade and then declined in third, fourth, and fifth grades with the exception of drawing flavorfulness, which rose slightly again at the fifth grade level. As might be expected, the level of self-confi- dence was consistent with these pat- terns. Initially more enthusiasm was exhibited on nonlinguistic tasks, but the level of enthusiasm for linguistic tasks rose steadily from kindergarten to third grade, where children were more enthused with storytelling than with drawing and clay. Storytelling competence correlated significantly with the children's Stanford achieve- ment scores; no correlation appeared
between achievement scores and com- petence in drawing and clay. The au- thors rejected the notion of a unified semiotic function and concluded that "development in drawing and clay reaches a peak around first grade and then begins to decline as children pro- ceed through elementary school and acquire concrete operational think- ing" (p. 11).
Symbol Use: Some Critical Observations
In the symbol-development studies, mention is made of the general reli- ance on language for communication at the elementary level in contrast to the limited use of visual art forms as vehicles for communication, although this observation is not reflected in the conclusions drawn by Gardner and his associates. Yet, these and other ef- fects of educational experiences per- meate every experimental task. The development of language skills is an important aspect of formal educa- tion; language skills and, hence, con- fidence are expected to increase with age and grade. This expectation has been verified in Gardner's studies of symbol development.
Conversely, the development of art skills is not a major goal in general education. Curriculum development lags far behind that of other subject areas. Results of Gardner's symbol- development studies reflect this dis- continuity, where the lack of progres- sive development in art skills contrasts greatly with the progressive skill de- velopment in language. Any analysis of artistic development should ac- count for major effects of education and prior experiences. Experimental results will always vary in accordance to the opportunity children have to develop art skills, as indicated in a number of studies on this topic (Brouch, 1971; Gilliatt, 1980; Gross- man, 1970; Seefeldt, 1979; Wilson, 1966). In the absence of a standard-
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ized curriculum, even junior and senior high school art programs are uniquely and individually designed. Without such continuity and sequence as ap- pears in academic subjects, caution is called for when making inferences about developmental levels of artistic growth.
Also absent from the studies on symbol development, as well as from earlier studies on aspects of artistic development, is reference to related theories and research in art education. In particular, no mention is made of June King McFee's Perception-Deline- ation (P-D) Theory (1970; McFee & Degge, 1977), well-known in art edu- cation and used frequently as the basis for inquiry into variables influencing children's artistic development. This organismic theory synthesizes ele- ments of many disciplines, among them Gestalt psychology, association theory, and cultural anthropology. This integrative aspect and, in particular, some of the postulates accounting for individual differences in McFee's P-D Theory, are also found in the writings of Gardner (i.e., cognitive styles). Mc- Fee, however, includes variables in- volved in the effects of prior experi- ences and education on creating artistic symbols and responding to the aesthetic properties of art objects.
Cultural Influences
As the sphere of Gardner's research widens, so does his perspective on factors influencing artistic develop- ment. Since the standard developmen- tal framework assumes culture to be a relatively fixed variable, a recent manuscript by Ives and Gardner (Note 4) departs from the traditional stance by viewing culture as a dynamic and constantly changing set of influences that effect children of diverse ages in different ways. They also differ in their sensitivity "to the particular symbolic medium in which knowledge is cap- tured and conveyed" (p. 5). Their re-
search has verified that "the use of different media and their underlying systems involved different mental op- erations" (p. 5).
Ives and Gardner have attempted to identify developmental trends of artistic symbolization common to all children. Universal patterns in drawings are ascribed to the very young. Character- istic schemes are identified at each age level from two to four with a con- tinuation through the fifth year. Ac- cording to the authors, cultural in- fluences become increasingly more evident in drawings after age five, peaking between seven and 12 years of age. Although older children are fluent in symbolic capacity, there is a "latency stage" as they come to draw less, or not at all. Ives and Gardner identify the probable cause as a move toward visual realism and the frustra- tion children experience when their renderings fall short of their expecta- tions. They noted a continual decline in artistry, especially during the ado- lescent years, apparently associated with the rise in critical faculties of the adolescent.
The authors recognized the limita- tions of their overview, since much of the survey was "speculative and programmatic rather than summative and conclusive" (p. 24). They are con- fident "that individual predispositions, genetic potentials, and cultural influ- ences should interact in ways which can in principle be specified" (p. 24), although we are still far from knowing what these will be. This is a welcome departure from a methodological limi- tation of most of the Project Zero re- search, their lack of heterogeneous experimental samples. The great ma- jority of the children studied over the past 10 years were drawn from middle class suburban schools, a selective population that in no way reflects the cultural mix prevalent in many of our public schools. Since the theoretical model that has grown from Gardner's research may be applied in other cul-
Project Zero: Evolution of Research 77
tures, its underlying limitations could lead users to believe that differences among children who are culturally di- verse are deviations from the norm.
The recognition of cultural influences on artistic development is another issue being addressed and evident in the recent cross-cultural literature in art education (Anderson, 1979; Eisner, 1979; Wilson & Wilson, 1979). The miss- ing links in many of the earlier cross- cultural studies and in the Ives and Gardner overview are the contextual factors and the effect of prior experi- ences and education on the drawings of children. Ives and Gardner presented a glimpse of possible educational effects by citing a study that showed high per- formance of Japanese students on a visual intelligence test, which they "at- tributed to the overall emphasis within the culture on visual expression" (p. 21).
Cultural Influences: Some Critical Observations
A major concern we have with regard to all of the literature reviewed is the pervasive exclusion of prior experi- ences, the role of instruction, and environmental factors as variables in determining developmental stages. Environmental factors can modify, accelerate, impede, or atrophy growth, yet culture seldom appears as a vari- able in the studies we examined. Cul- turally diverse children as subjects for comparative analysis are noticeably absent. Cross-cultural perspectives in determining the universality of devel- opmental stages in artistic growth are taken from existing and scattered sources, a weakness noted by Gardner and his associates also.
Conclusion
Project Zero and, in particular, Gard- ner, have made a major contribution to art education in the theoretical realm.
Gardner's focus on the integration and extension of theories to explain the developmental process of artistic growth, central to which is the use and understanding of symbols, has received increasing attention in the field of art education. This body of work has an internal, logical consis- tency; Gardner articulates it into a masterfully integrated whole.
The potential of this theoretical base for illuminating some basic issues con- cerning artistic growth in children holds great promise. The testing of theory is the basis of research. The strength of this inquiry rests on the appropriateness of the means em- ployed to test the experimental hy- potheses. In our examination of the Project Zero literature, we have found consistent gaps and weaknesses in Gardner's translation of his theory into his experimental tasks, which has led us to question the validity of some of his results.
Project Zero offers a model of ten years' continuous and focused work to the rest of a profession whose chief research characteristic is a scattering of energy. We are inspired by Project Zero's productivity; we encourage them to continue just as energetically in the future. Whatever imperfections we can observe in Project Zero in no way diminish, in our view, their unique contributions to the theoretical and philosophical bases for inquiry in art education; they only point up the fact that Project Zero has identified and confronted difficult questions.
Our critique of Project Zero has raised certain issues that are common to all visual arts research. Let us now specify 10 goals toward which we all, as researchers, may work.
1. We must be truly multidisciplinary when we design our research and se- lect methodology, drawing ideas and resources from wherever we can. First, let us read widely; perhaps publishing integrated literature reviews pertain-
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ing to basic areas would be valuable. Second, let us follow Project Zero's teamwork example and undertake co- operative research. We need the kind of broad-ranging, long-term, sequen- tial research that only many people working together can provide. Let us stop thinking of research as an indi- vidual activity occurring at isolated universities. Research teams could con- tain people from a number of schools and laboratories all across the country.
2. We must pay more attention to art and artists. We should work with people who have sophisticated art skills if we do not have them ourselves. How can we identify the artistically unique without expertise? Only the connoisseur can distinguish the excep- tional from the common.
3. We must improve our research designs and data manipulations. The visual arts offer special problems in this regard because of the complexity of the stimuli and nature of the tasks involved.
4. We must account for the features of our subject populations. We should distinguish the effects of culture and education from developmental charac- teristics. In this process let us examine people from diverse walks of life.
5. We must scrutinize our experi- mental results critically and interpret them cautiously.
6. We must replicate our experi- ments and those of others to verify our results. We must sequence our experiments toward long-range objec- tives. Both may be done by more than one person through cooperative re- search.
7. We must study children's per- ceptual abilities that relate to the visual arts. We should learn to recog- nize visual concepts and how they form. We should look at what all of the arts have in common and how they differ.
8. We must ask the same questions of adults that we do of children. We
need to establish parameters of adult behavior in the arts if we wish to under- stand children's artistic development.
9. We must study learning and teach- ing, and, in the process, perhaps reex- amine the concepts of basic and ap- plied research. We need to know how instruction affects artistic behavior. We need to improve the efficiency of teaching. We need to understand how education interacts with development; let us select subjects for developmen- tal research who have participated in ongoing art programs.
10. We must support research in the visual arts. We can support it with our money, with research appoint- ments in our universities, with time released from teaching, and with our recognition that research is a legiti- mate occupation for artists and edu- cators.
This is a time of promise in our ma- turing profession, when challenges are great and so, therefore, are the opportunities for creative and satisfy- ing work. Good research raises ques- tions; defining problems, as Project Zero has done over the last decade, has given us many directions for imagi- native study. The future, moreover, remains for all of us to shape.
Reference Notes
1. Rush, J. C. & Sabers, D. L. The percep- tion of artistic style. Studies in Art Edu- cation, in press.
2. Hickey, D. The development and testing of a matrix of perceptual and cognitive abilities in art appreciation and criticism among children and adolescents. Unpub- lished doctoral dissertation, Indiana Uni- versity, 1975.
3. Wolf, D. & Gardner, H. Beyond playing or polishing: A developmental view of ar- tistry. Unpublished manuscript.
4. Ives, S. W. & Gardner, H. Cultural influ- ences on children's drawings: A develop- mental perspective. In A. Hurwitz (Ed.), Art education international. Pennsylvania State University, in press.
Project Zero: Evolution of Research 79
References
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Bloom, K. The arts in education, a new move- ment. In N. Shuker, Arts in education part- ners: Schools and their communities. New York: Georgian Press, 1977.
Brouch, V. An experimental study of the effect of synchronized slide-tape learning experiences on the tempera paintings of third and fourth grade children. Studies in Art Education, 1971, 12 (3), 31-42.
Carothers, T. & Gardner, H. When children's drawings become art: The emergence of aesthetic production and perception. De- velopmental Psychology, 1979, 15 (5), 570-580.
DePorter, D. A. & Kavanaugh, R. D. Param- eters of children's sensitivity to painting styles. Studies in Art Education, 1979, 20 (1), 43.
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Gardner, H. Children's sensitivity to painting styles. Child Development, 1970, 41, 813- 821. (a)
Gardner, H. Effects of stimulus rearrangement on the development of sensitivity to paint- ing styles. Proceedings, 78th Annual Con- vention, APA, 1970. (b)
Gardner, H. The development of sensitivity to artistic styles. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1971, 29, 515-527.
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thetic perception. British Journal of Aes- thetics, 1972, 12 (1), 40-59. (b)
Gardner, H. Style sensitivity in children. Hu- man Development, 1972, 15, 325-338. (c)
Gardner, H. The arts and human develop- ment. New York: Wiley, 1973. (a)
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Gardner, H. On the acquisition of first symbol systems. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, 1976 (3), 22-37. (a)
Gardner, H. Unfolding or teaching: On the optimal approach to art education. In E. Eisner (Ed.), The arts, human develop- ment, and education. Berkeley, CA: Mc- Cutchan Publishing, 1976. (b)
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Gardner, H. Artful scribbles. New York: Basic Books, 1980.
Gardner, H. & Gardner, J. Developmental trends in sensitivity to painting style and subject matter. Studies in Art Education, 1970, 12 (1), 11-16.
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Gilliatt, M. T. The effects of habituation, the Feldman-Mittler methodology, and studio activities on expanding art preferences of elementary students. Studies in Art Edu- cation, 1980, 21, 43-49.
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J. Lovano-Kerr, J. Rush
Goodnow, J. Children drawing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.
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Howard, V. A. Harvard Project Zero: A fresh look at art education. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 1971, 5 (1), 61-73.
Ives, W. S., Silverman, J., Kelly, H., & Gard- ner, H. Artistic development in the early school years: A crss media study of story- telling, drawing and clay modelling. Tech- nical Report #8, Harvard Project Zero, Sept. 1979.
Kannegieter, R. The effects of a learning pro- gram in activity upon the visual percep- tion of shape. Studies in Art Education, 1971, 12 (2), 18-27.
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Perkins, D. N. & Gardner, H. Harvard Project Zero: Moving from zero to one. Harvard Graduate School of Education Associa- tion Bulletin, 1974, 18 (2), 5-10.
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Rosenstiel, A. K. & Gardner, H. The effect of
critical comparisons upon children's drawings. Studies in Art Education, 1977, 19, 36.
Rosenstiel, A. K., Morison, P., Silverman, J., & Gardner, H. Critical judgment: A devel- opmental study. Journal of Aesthetic Edu- cation, 1978, 12,95-107.
Rush, J. C. Acquiring a concept of painting style. Studies in Art Education, 1979, 20 (3), 43-51.
Schapiro, M. In S. Tax (Ed.), Anthropology today. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.
Seefeldt, C. The effects of a program de- signed to increase young children's per- ception of texture. Studies in Art Educa- tion, 1979, 20 (2), 40-43.
Silverman, J., Winner, E., & Gardner, H. On going beyond the literal: The development of sensitivity to artistic symbols. Semi- otica, 1976, 18, 291-312.
Silverman, J., Winner, E., Rosenstiel, A. K., & Gardner, H. On training sensitivity to painting styles. Perception, 1975, 4, 373-384.
Tighe, T. J. Concept formation and art: Fur- ther evidence on the applicability of Walk's technique. Psychonomic Science, 1968, 12 (8), 363-364.
Walk, R. D. Concept formation and art: Basic experiment and controls. Psycho- nomic Science, 1967, 9 (4), 237-238.
Walk, R. D., Karusaitis, K., Lebowitz, C, and Falbo, T. Artistic style as concept forma- tion for children and adults. Merrill- Palmer Quarterly, 1971, 17 (4), 347-356.
Wilson, B. G. An experimental study de- signed to alter fifth and sixth grade stu- dents' perception of paintings. Studies in Art Education, 1966, 8 (1), 33-42.
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Jessie Lovano-Kerr
School of Education Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405
Jean Rush
Department of Art University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona 85721
Project Zero: Evolution of Research
81
RESPONSE TO COMMENT ON PROJECT ZERO BY JESSIE LOVANO-KERR AND JEAN RUSH
Howard Gardner Harvard Project Zero
I am grateful to Professors Jessie Lovano-Kerr and Jean Rush for the care they have taken in examining some of the work undertaken at Project Zero over the last decade. It is not pos- sible, and possibly not appropriate, to respond to every point which they raise. Accordingly, in these notes, I will limit myself to some points of clari- fication about efforts being undertaken at Project Zero and to some correc- tions of errors of fact.
While it is flattering to be the center of attention of such a lengthy review, and to read the favorable comments dispensed by the authors, I must point out that Project Zero is in no sense synonymous with the work of myself and my immediate colleagues. The Proj- ect was founded by Nelson Goodman, a philosopher, is currently co-directed by David Perkins, a mathematician trained in artificial intelligence, and houses at any one time between 20 and 35 full- time and part-time researchers and stu- dents. We are not a monolith and no two members of the Project would respond to the present critique in the same manner. Moreover, starting from that whimsical Zero, we have in fact changed our thinking on nearly all points, some- times slightly, sometimes dramatically. We ourselves have questioned nearly all of the results discussed here by our critics. What has not changed, however, are our beliefs in the utility of the developmental paradigm and in the ways in which experimental studies in aesthetics should be framed and executed.
Following the example of Piaget, we have always proceeded by outlin- ing an "end-state" of competence
within a particular artistic realm, de- vising tasks which make it possible to examine the development of the requi- site operations across a range of ages, and then examining how this ability emerges in a sample of American chil- dren. We have sought to use stimuli which are as close to "real" works of art as possible, and to devise ques- tions and procedures which are as natural and non-invasive as possible, while at the same time employing proper scientific procedures and con- trols. While we have not worked in elite private schools or in urban ghet- tos, our sampling has been quite broad and representative within the American context.
This policy has yielded a program of research, including certain areas of stress and certain points of relative neglect. We have deliberately sampled a wide range of artistic abilities, rather than focussing just on one or two. We have steered away from tasks in which one set of subjects might be much better trained or informed than an- other. We have noted sex differences and social class differences, when appropriate, but have not for the most part made such differences the center of our concern. Nor have we under- taken the enormously difficult task of trying to determine the exact back- ground and training of our particular subjects. (However, following standard experimental practice, we have sam- pled a broad range of subjects so that any individual differences in training should, in the end, "average out.") Finally, again following Piaget's exam- ple, we have employed tasks which pose genuine difficulties for younger
82
subjects, tasks on which there is a rea- sonable chance that they will fail, thereby in the process revealing their presuppositions, strategies, and world- views.
What we hope will emerge eventually from this program is an overview of how a certain set of artistic skills de- velops within the American context, in the absence of specific training regi- mens. In other words, much as Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and William Da- mon have provided baseline develop- mental portraits in other seminal areas of human growth, we seek a first-order approximation to the natural develop- mental history of key artistic capaci- ties. Against this background, it should then be possible to ascertain the flexi- bility of this portrait, the differences which background and training can make, the effects of intervention or of a highly unusual home or school set- ting, the role of individual differences, and the like. In other words, first, the approximation: then refinements, al- terations or possibly even the scut- tling of the initial model.
It is, or course, possible to follow other research strategies in the areas of artistic development and art edu- cation. My critics seem to favor an alternate approach, though they do not spell it out. They obviously feel that contexts and training are impor- tant. I agree. But I must question whether our scientific understanding, or even our non-scientific understand- ing, would be much enhanced by the kind of experimental program which they appear to espouse.
To be specific: We know, without doing any more studies, that training will help children. Indeed, if it does not, we simply draw the conclusion that the training program was no good. By the same token, we know that con- text influences a child's behavior; oft- times, in fact, context is the name of the game in educational psychology. To document these truisms once again is a waste of time. What seems worth-
while, however, is to take a coherent model of the child, one based, for example, on developmental studies, and to determine the effects of train- ing and context under the rubric of such a model: to ascertain, for in- stance, which contexts work best at various ages and stages, which ones have relatively little effect, which yield the best short-term, long-term, me- dium-term gains, and the like. At the risk of seeming self-serving, then, I suggest that the kind of research ap- proach apparently favored by my critics makes sense when undertaken in the wake of a theory or a model of artistic development, but not before and not otherwise.
So much for philosophy of research. Most of Professors Lovano-Kerr and Rush's paper consists of a set of criti- cisms, some quibbles, some more ex- tensive, of research undertaken by the developmental group at Project Zero. Any study has flaws and ours certainly are no exception. Indeed, we under- take further studies in an effort to com- pensate for flaws, and we hope that our more recent research (and that of others) is more sophisticated due to our recognition of earlier mistakes and insufficiencies. Similarly, it should be noted that we have followed our own precepts, conducting training studies after our initial baseline studies have been carried out, and that our views have changed as a result of the train- ing studies. This seems somewhat dis- concerting to our critics, who seem to prefer that we not dirty our hands or our publications with training studies or with changes of mind, but I am afraid I cannot apologize for either practice.
Of the various criticisms, the one about the use of reproductions in our study of children's conceptions of arts seems most valid to me. Certainly the re- lation between responses based upon "real art works" and responses based upon reproductions deserves study, and I hope that someone will undertake
Response to Lovano-Kerr and Rush 83
the study (although it is not as easy to do as it might at first seem). I would only add that the fact that we obtained es- sentially the same results whether we used reproductions or slides, and whether we questioned children about "paintings," poems, or songs, makes it unlikely that the use of reproductions has had a major impact on our results.
At a few points, I felt that my critics were being disingenuous. Thus, when they say that "lack of sensitivity to style seems consistent in all untrained sub- jects despite age," they ignore the obvious points of difference between lacking the concept of style altogether (as do young children) and having the concept but being unskilled in applying it and being able to overlook the subject matter of the artist (as do the older sub- jects). By the same token, when they criticize the stimuli in the Carothers and Gardner study for lack of artistic quality, they deliberately overlook the fact that it was necessary to use drawings which would not intimidate the children who had to complete them, and which had to be controlled on all variables save the ones being examined — replete- ness and expressivity.
There were a few times in the paper where I felt that I was the intended victim of a hatchet job, and here I must strongly protest. It is claimed that "(this pattern of artistic development) is common to children of all cultures." On pages 159-160 of Artful Scribbles, I dis- cuss the cross-cultural work of Alex- ander Alland and explicitly consider the possibility that "our developmental norms" are limited to children in a West- ern context who have had the oppor- tunity to draw from an early age. It is claimed that our studies document "lack of progressive development in art skills," whereas in truth, nearly all of our
studies document some growth in artis- tic skills and some of them actually document the effects of training. Finally, and most annoyingly, it is asserted that I regard "the natural un- folding of artistic development as invio- lable" and that "intervention is a nega- tive influence." In the very article in which I am alleged to hold this point of view, I take exactly the opposite posi- tion: namely, that intervention is helpful and necessary after the pre-school years. I have taken this position in the numerous articles I have written on the educational aspects of artistic develop- ment, and in my chapter on the subject in Artful Scribbles. I find it astonishing that my critics could attribute this posi- tion to me, unless they simply find it convenient to do so.
With respect to the charge that I ignore art educators and am "either unaware of or disinterested (sic) in many contemporary issues in the pro- fession," I plead innocent. I am in favor of interdisciplinary exchange, and have sought to realize this orientation at Project Zero. To this ecumenical end, let me affirm that I have read Professor Lovano-Kerr's and Rush's Ten Com- mandments of Visual Arts Research, and I say, Amen.
I am grateful to the Spencer Foun- dation, the Carnegie Corporation, the Markle Foundation, the National Sci- ence Foundation, and the National Institute of Education for their gener- ous support of the work undertaken at Project Zero.
Howard Gardner
Harvard Project Zero
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
84 Howard Gardner
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Art Sinsabaugh, Photograph Galena, Illinois, 1959
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