Abstract
When drawing faces, people show a systematic bias of placing the eyes higher up the head than they are placed in reality. This study investigated the development of this phenomenon while removing the potential confound of drawing ability. Participants (N = 124) in three age groups (3–5 yo, 10–11 yo, and adults) reconstructed two foam faces: one from observation and one from memory. The high eye placement bias was remarkably robust with mean eye placement in every condition significantly higher than the original faces. The same bias was not shown for mouth placement. Eye placement was highest for the youngest participants and for the memory conditions. The results suggest that an eye placement bias is not caused by the motor skill demands required for drawing and lend evidence to the suggestion that an eye placement bias is caused by perceptual and decision-making processes.
Highlights
When drawing faces, people show a systematic bias of placing the eyes higher up the head than they are placed in reality
Previous research had identified an eye placement ratio (EPR) bias of around 0.55 which is a deviation from the correct EPR of 0.5 (Carbon & Wirth, 2014; McManus et al, 2012; Ostrofsky et al, 2014)
We predicted that, when drawing abilities were controlled for using a simple reconstruction task, EPR bias would be reduced in all groups
Summary
People show a systematic bias of placing the eyes higher up the head than they are placed in reality. Ostrofsky (2015) suggests that eye position distortion is influenced by graphic long-term memories: Eye EPRs in observation-based drawings are higher (0.55) than the average face eye placement (0.5) but lower than EPRs drawn from memory (0.6). It is unclear why memories of faces should be distorted, given that faces are highly familiar stimuli. Harrison et al (2017) argue that when recreating stimuli, salient features are given a disproportionate amount of space within the outline of the drawn object They found that as well as raising the position of eyes on faces, when redrawing a drawing of a house, adults raised the position of the top floor windows on the house. Once again, drawing task demands may have influenced this bias
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