Sex Differences in Visual Realism in Drawings of Animate and Inanimate Objects

Abstract

Sex differences in a visually realistic drawing style were examined using the model of a curvy cup as an inanimate object, and the Draw-A-Person test (DAP) as a task involving animate objects, with 7-to 12-year-old children (N = 60; 30 boys). Accurately drawing the internal detail of the cup-indicating interest in a depth feature-was not dependent on age in boys, but only in girls, as 7-year-old boys were already engaging with this cup feature. However, the age effect of the correct omission of an occluded handle-indicating a transition from realism in terms of function (intellectual realism) to one of appearance (visual realism)-was the same for both sexes. The correct omission of the occluded handle was correlated with bilingualism and drawing the internal cup detail in girls, but with drawing the silhouette contour of the cup in boys. Because a figure's silhouette enables object identification from a distance, while perception of detail and language occurs in nearer space, it was concluded that boys and girls may differ in the way they conceptualize depth in pictorial space, rather than in visual realism as such.One of the most well-known distinctions in drawing development is the difference between intellectual realism and visual realism (Freeman,

Deterioration and recovery of DAP IQ scores in the repeated assessment of the Naglieri Draw-A-Person (DAP) test in 6- to 12-year-old children.

“…The female advantage in the human figure drawing test is well known since Goodenough (Goodenough, 1926;Goodenough & Harris, 1950;Lange-Küttner et al, 2002;Willcock et al, 2011). Girls also drew plenty of detail when they were copying cubes that had a regular surface pattern, whereas boys focused more on the silhouette (Lange-Küttner, 2011;Lange-Küttner & Ebersbach, 2013). However, Naglieri (1988) did not provide separate standardized scores for girls and boys because, unlike Goodenough and Harris, he did not obtain significant gender differences in a large survey sample of 2,622.…”

Do drawing stages really exist? Children’s early mapping of perspective.

“…However, these graphic objects are iconic and generally convey valuable disambiguating information that shows children's knowledge about object identity and function (intellectual realism) (Luquet, 1927(Luquet, /2001. For instance, a cup would always be drawn with a handle even if the handle was out of sight because this is what differentiates a cup from, for instance, a vase (Davis, 1983(Davis, , 1985Ford & Rees, 2008;Lange-Küttner, 2011). Children would even agree that a change in this kind of iconic object can have an effect on the real object (Jolley, 2008), which may have been a "leftover" from an earlier time when infants actually grasped objects in pictures (DeLoache, Pierroutsakos, Uttal, Rosengren, & Gottlieb, 1998).…”

Object- and View-Specificity in Agreement: The Case of Embodied Perspective

“…However, so far it has not been shown that children at age seven know that spatial axes will converge towards the viewpoint [26]. Instead, children at this age think more about object identity and less about appearances [2,15,29,30]. Hence, it is concluded that the perspective model with the built-in perspective fits with children's belief that a picture should represent enduring properties of this world and not just an incidental subjective view such that perspective affords.…”

“…Especially boys focus on the contour of figure silhouette [3,15]. However, an object contour is not a useful visual cue for drawing in perspective.…”