John Kennedy

University of Toronto | U of T · Department of Psychology

Tom Thomson is a doyen of Canadian art. Here, I argue one of his well-known pictures contains a hidden figure. In Thomson’s Islands, Canoe Lake , 1916, a blue-gray picture primitive richly affords a rock and a bear, a long-overlooked ambiguity, one that Thomson did not tell us he intended. Its picture primitives are contours and patches. They offer...

Did Tom Thomson (1877-1917), doyen of Canadian art, put an ambiguity in Islands, Canoe Lake, 1916 ? In this note on one of Canada’s most influential painters of the 20th Century, let us consider Islands, and ask if the ambiguity was intentional. In the face of positive evidence, does the conclusion have to be a Scottish verdict? A likelihood ratio...

Usain Bolt’s Lightning Bolt pose, one arm highly extended to one side, suggests action. Likewise, static pictures of animals, legs extended, show animation. We tested a new cue for motion perception—extension—and in particular extension of dancer’s legs. An experiment with pictures of a dancer finds larger angles between the legs suggest greater mo...

In his extensive writing about pictures, James J. Gibson offered perspective formulae for square tiles projecting trapezoids onto a picture plane, foreshortening to zero height with distance. I reverse the claim: as distance decreases, the trapezoids increase to infinite height, in marginal distortion, or forelengthening. I also reverse the directi...

We are offer an introduction to a highly unusual book — the first of its kind it may well be — in which experimental psychology tackles topics of interest to drawing classes at schools of art and design.

As Winner (1982) argued, we “read” a lot in to pictures, aptly via metaphor—which applies to unreal stretch in flying-gallop—but inaccurately with perspective—we underestimate compression of the azimuth.

Along with a circle of close colleagues, including Rudolf Arnheim, Gestaltist, and Nelson Goodman, Nominalist, Ellen Winner (1982) argued we “read” a lot in to pictures. Here, in Part 1, we take up metaphor, a Winner/Arnheim interest, and show how viewers read unreal stretch in flying-gallop pictures. In Part 2, we examine a Winner/Goodman interest...

All representational media support tropes. This chapter considers pictures and asks how pictorial metaphors can be devised by people with relatively little experience in the medium. The examples considered are raised-line drawings devised by blind children and adults. In some, the shapes of objects are anomalous but apt. In others the use of a line...

In a few seconds, touch can reveal a tactile picture’s shapes. The shapes are taken as representations. As examples, this chapter offers sketches drawn by EW, a blind adult. In theory, visible and tangible outline pictures rely on the same principle: A line can stand for a surface edge. The result is 6 options -- combinations of foreground and back...

In a few seconds, touch can reveal a tactile picture's shapes. The shapes are taken as representations. As examples, this chapter offers sketches drawn by EW, a blind adult. In theory, visible and tangible outline pictures rely on the same principle: A line can stand for a surface edge. The result is 6 options-combinations of foreground and backgro...

In two experiments, we tested pictures of horse gaits- A lt (standing), walk, trot, gallop, and a fake gallop, a pose shown in a well-known Gericault painting. The pose was portrayed frequently in the nineteenth century, its features hotly debated. Fake gallop has legs extended fore and rear, close to parallel to the ground. Experiment 1 sampled re...

Visual illusions cut across academic divides and popular interests: on the one hand, illusions provide entertainment as curious tricks of the eye; on the other hand, scientific research related to illusory phenomena has given generations of scientists and artists deep insights into the brain and principles of mind and consciousness. Numerous thinke...

2D angles on a picture surface are misperceived. Angles of 40 to 65 degrees and 120 to 160 degrees in a quadrilateral depicting the top of a cube are heavily biased towards the pictured angle (90 degrees). The illusion is likely due to 3D information e.g. eccentricity depicting foreshortening. Information for the picture surface lessens the effect.

Of use to vision, from our vantage point, a line at 45° to the vertical hits the ground at a distance equal to our eye-height.

A new everyday visual size illusion is presented—the Pot/Lid illusion. Observers choose an unduly large lid for a pot. We ask whether the optic slant of the pot brim would increase its apparent size or if vision underestimates the size of tilted lids.

The question as to whether people totally blind since infancy process allocentric or external spatial information like the sighted has caused considerable debate within the literature. Due to the extreme rarity of the population, researchers have often included individuals with retinopathy of prematurity (RoP-over oxygenation at birth) within the s...

Outline depicts edges of surfaces, in vision and touch. Perspective applies to outline drawing, vision and touch. Metaphors in pictures are understood by the blind and the sighted. Development of drawing is similar in the sighted and blind.

Observers viewed pictures of a simulated ground plane and judged the orientation of lines pictured as lying on the ground. We presented three lines at a time and manipulated three factors: (1) the declination of the lines below the horizon (depicting distance to target angles), (2) their length, and (3) whether or not they converged to a point on t...

A 12-year-old congenitally-blind girl drew a car moving, stationary and braking. For stationary, she put the wheels inside the car and, for braking, drew the wheels as rough rectangles. At the age verbal metaphor is understood (Winner, 1988), the girl invented metaphoric drawings. In these, what is shown is not what is meant. In late childhood, met...

Blind people can invent drawings for material objects like cups, and matters esthetic, like " glory " at the climax of a story. In sketches of cups, their drawings are realistic, using lines for surface edges of profiles, and borders of cross-sections. They are metaphoric if they show purely mental events. These points are illustrated by two drawin...

We point out that in addition to the well-known 4 possible response options in the Piaget 3-Mountains test of spatial cognition, there are 2 impossible options. There are 4 vantage points on the 3 mountains (cone, cube and sphere), but there are 6 ways to order a cone, a cube and a sphere. We asked blind, blindfolded and sighted adults to judge the...

Perception of 2-D ellipses on a picture surface is inaccurate-if the ellipses depict circles that are tilted in 3-D, receding from the viewer (Hammad, Kennedy, Juricevic, & Rajani, 2008a, Perception, 37, 504-510). Notably, the minor axis of the ellipse is seen as larger than is true. This illusory effect could be due to the simultaneous presence of...

We will demonstrate possible and impossible response alternatives in the Piaget three-mountains task. The response alternative in the foreground in the demo photograph is impossible. The response alternative in the background is possible. In the Piaget three-mountains task, a cube, a sphere, and a cone are placed on a table. Response shapes, in rel...

This article makes four points. First, in making raised, tangible outline pictures, blind people can invent sophisticated treatments for topics they select themselves. Second, their drawings can be realistic. Third, they can also be metaphoric, in showing sounds for example. Fourth, their outline drawings use line for surface edges, and they incorp...

Three groups of observers pointed to target circles in a path on the ground, in two parallel rows. Participants in one group viewed the circles and then pointed blindfolded. Those in a second group were blindfolded and then touched the circles with a stick while walking past them. Volunteers in the third group were blind adults, a diverse group, wh...

Perception of 2‑D ellipses on a picture surface is inaccurate—if the ellipses depict circles that are tilted in 3‑D, receding from the viewer (Hammad, Kennedy, Juricevic, & Rajani, 2008a, Perception, 37, 504–510). Notably, the minor axis of the ellipse is seen as larger than is true. This illusory effect could be due to the simultaneous presence of...

In the picture-surface illusion, 2D features on the picture’s surface are seen biased towards their 3D referent e.g. an angle of 200 depicting a 900 corner of a cube is seen as 300. We tested linear and parallel perspective drawings of cubes with cube drawings subtending 50 to 500. The picture-surface illusion occurs for both parallel and linear pe...

Until the last two decades, indications that blind people would understand and create pictures were sparse. EW, a totally blind adult, who began making raised-line drawings in her thirties, created a portfolio of several hundred sketches in nine years. She selects her own topics and invents her treatments of the subjects. What is of special interes...

Plans show shapes of objects from above, and represent both their left–right order and their order in the z-dimension (the distance of the objects). Elevations show only the vertical shapes of objects arranged from left to right. Plans, having more spatial information, may be more difficult for participants to construct. Results from a study with s...

Observers were instructed to point with their right arm to a mirror image of their left shoulder. Instead of pointing to the target with their real arm, they occluded the target with their mirror-imaged finger, and their real finger pointed off to the left side of the target, facts that came as a surprise to them in debriefing. The occlusion by a m...

Often, artworks are representational pictures, surfaces that we experience as showing other surfaces. They give us twofold experiences -- two things simultaneously in one space, firstly, surfaces standing before us, and, secondly, represented surfaces. To understand the double experience, we need to understand perception of surfaces, both the real...

An edge of a surface is a limit of a polarized plane. Outline depiction of surface edges was discovered by paleolithic artists. Rather than having significance by fiat, it has a “biomedical” character – a mechanism in our body or “bauplan” which allows dotted lines, continuous lines and surface edges to have the same status in vision and touch. To...

Observers pointing to a target viewed directly may elevate their fingertip close to the line of sight. However, pointing blindfolded, after viewing the target, they may pivot lower, from the shoulder, aligning the arm with the target as if reaching to the target. Indeed, in Experiment 1 participants elevated their arms more in visually monitored th...

Blind man draws using foreshortening.

Key problems of picture perception include inverse projection from the observer as an embodied vantage point, illusory effects on picture surfaces, the elements of pictures, the major geometry used to show space, the modalities of pictures and non­literal representation. Our suggestions are as follows: environments constrain inverse projection, per...

When viewing a perspective picture, oftentimes some depicted objects will look distorted (Kubovy, 1986). How does vision use information for 3-D in a perspective picture when perceiving the dimensions of a depicted object? Juricevic & Kennedy (2006) proposed an Angle and Ratios Together (ART) theory, based on the ratio of the visual angles of the o...

Expressions on schematic faces are perceived as happier when the facial features are located at the top of a face than when located at the bottom (Todorovic, personal communication, 2008; Bhasin et al, 2010). Two theories of this were tested. Posture Theory holds that features positioned high represent a happy expression because they are associated...

Lydia Maniatis (2009) adroitly argues our theories of a perspective illusion to do with angles are rigged in favour of our conclusions. Nice point. She develops useful alternative accounts of our illusion. However, her rigging argument involves the Bishop Berkeley induction problem. In response, we point out 2D features can specify 3D shapes. Count...

Profiles may vary in expression with changes in the height of the profile's features, the mouth's angle at the profile contour, and head tilt. In three experiments, we varied these factors. Features low on the profile, with mouths at an obtuse angle to the profile line and head tilted 15 degrees forehead-forward, appear especially sad. High feature...

Observers were shown wide-angle pictures of tiles on a ground plane and were asked about the aspect ratios of the tiles. The observers viewed the pictures from a fixed center of projection. Some of the tiles were in a path coming straight toward the observer. In one picture, the path came from the center of the picture, and in two others the path c...

How body relates to mind is the fundamental question addressed by embodiment theory. Margaret Wilson’s (2002) wide-ranging review assessed six versions of the theory. Wilson concluded one to do with internalization is effective: allegedly abstract cognitive processes “make use of sensorimotor functions in exactly this kind of covert way” (p. 633)....

Kennedy and Juricevic argue that in both normal sighted and blind people the development of drawing using spatial projection systems proceeds from an orthogonal basis to freehand versions of parallel perspective and inverse perspective, and then to viewpoint perspective in which convergence shows parallel edges in the scene. They suggest the develo...

Shapes on picture surfaces are not seen accurately (Arnheim, 1954). In particular, if they depict 3-D forms, angles between lines on a picture surface are misperceived. To test four theories of the misperception, subjects estimated acute and obtuse internal angles of quadrilaterals. Each quadrilateral was shown alone or as part of a drawing of a cu...

How body relates to mind is the fundamental question addressed by embodiment theory. Margaret Wilson’s (2002) wide-ranging review assessed six versions of the theory. Wilson concluded one to do with internalization is effective: allegedly abstract cognitive processes “make use of sensorimotor functions in exactly this kind of covert way” (p. 633)....

Tracy T, a blind adult, has appreciable spatial skills and an interest in drawing.1 Here we find that her drawings generally employ orthogonals, that is, plans and elevations with correct orientation from the observer’s vantage point. Occasionally they use freehand parallel, and one- and two- point projection. Tracy T does not use T-junctions for o...

Shapes on the surface of a perspective picture may be misperceived. Subjects picked a match for an ellipse depicting the circular top of a cylinder. The top was depicted as tilted forward from 58 to 858, generating a series of ellipses on the picture surface. The matches were biased towards a circle over a wide range of midrange tilts, which sugges...

A central problem for psychology is vision's reaction to perspective. In the present studies, observers looked at perspective pictures projected by square tiles on a ground plane. They judged the tile dimensions while positioned at the correct distance, farther or nearer. In some pictures, many tiles appeared too short to be squares, many too long,...

Can the principle of convergence in three spatial dimensions be reflected in drawings by the congenitally blind? A man who had been totally blind since birth was asked to draw scenes such as a tabletop with three cubes receding to the observer's left side. He used converging lines to show the tops of the cubes receding in depth. He drew the cubes t...

We searched the Internet for expressions linking topics, such as crime, and vehicles, such as disease, as similes (crime is like a disease) and as metaphors (crime is a disease). We counted the number of times the expressions were accompanied by explanations (crime is like a disease because it spreads by direct personal influence). Similes were mor...

Esref is a congenitally totally blind man, practiced in drawing. He was asked to draw solid and wire cubes situated in several places around his vantage point. He used foreshortening of receding sides and convergence of obliques, in approximate one-point perspective. We note that haptics provides information about the direction of objects--the basi...

David Ritchie (2003b) defended Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980) theory of conceptual metaphor against criticism made by Vervaeke and Kennedy (1996). Though Ritchie modified theory of conceptual metaphor, he held fast to the idea that much of abstract thought depends on metaphorical projection from embodied experience. We argue therein lie reductionism’s d...

Kennedy and Bai (2000 Perception 29 399-408) argued incorrect border polarity blocked perception of faces in shape-from-shadow 'Mooney faces' with dark lines at the contour, a display inspired by Hering. Their hypothesis was tested with several displays, notably binocular gratings made of lines of dots. The stereo-induced depth involved a shadow fa...

Metaphors and similes relate a topic (e.g., 'crime') and a vehicle ('disease'). As sentences, metaphors (e.g., 'crime is a disease') have the same form as literal claims about a category and similes (e.g., 'crime is like a disease') the form of a comparison. However, a traditional argument is these differences between metaphors and similes are supe...

Figurative comparisons can be expressed as metaphors (e.g., “politics is a circus”) or similes (e.g., “politics is like a circus”). What determines the form in which a comparison is expressed? We examine two potential factors—aptness and comprehensibility. To be apt is to capture important features of a topic. Comprehensibility means being relative...

Gaia, a totally blind girl, was asked to make raised-line drawings. Gaia's vision at best was peripheral. She draws out of interest, and has drawn since preschool with encouragement from her mother. She was asked to draw objects and scenes involving depth from a vantage point, eg a table from below, two cars (one behind the other), and two parallel...

Outline drawings in a raised form were made by a blind woman, Tracy, who has been blind from very early in life. Highly practiced in drawing, she reports she is largely self-taught. To invoke matters of projection, she was asked to represent an object with faces slanting away from the observer, a fixed array from different vantage points, and sets...

Pictures are tactile as well as visual. Outline pictures stand for the same kinds of surface features in touch and vision. Vantage point geometry is used by blind and sighted perceivers in pictures. Limits of pictures may be comparable for the blind and sighted, and transcended in useful ways.

Pictures are tactile as well as visual. Outline pictures stand for the same kinds of surface features in touch and vision. Vantage point geometry is used by blind and sighted perceivers in pictures. Limits of pictures may be comparable for the blind and sighted, and transcended in useful ways.

DAngiulli et al (1998 Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 39 187-190) found blind and sighted (blindfolded) children identified common objects in raised-outline drawings explored haptically, and corrected themselves without feedback. The self-correction suggests that participants can assess the extent to which the referents they suggest as possible...