About
34
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Introduction
Our group shares an interest in probing possible correlations between drawing ability and factors such as mathematical ability, personality traits and dyslexia and dyspraxia. It extends research by gathering and analysing data generated through questionnaires and a series of drawing exercises administered to the Royal College of Art’s MA cohort, with the ultimate objective of developing inclusive strategies for the teaching of drawing.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 2002 - present
September 2002 - present
September 1987 - July 2002
Education
September 2006 - July 2007
University of the Arts
Field of study
- supervising post graduate research
January 1998 - July 1998
September 1981 - June 1984
Publications
Publications (34)
This hands-on practical guide provides dyslexic young people with techniques to improve their observational drawing skills, showing them how they can work around the issues commonly reported by students with SLDs.
Many creative and talented individuals with neurological differences report difficulties with short-term memory, co-ordination and plann...
PowerPoint of presentation to Research-Teaching Nexus meeting, Gregynog, 2011
This paper reports on a series of drawing workshops held at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London, which tested an original pedagogical strategy designed to help dyslexic and/or dyspraxic art and design students who had reported difficulties with their abilities to make accurate representational drawings. A group of non-dyslexic/dyspraxic RCA stud...
A 3-day drawing workshop held at the Royal College of Art, October 2016
This paper reports recent research undertaken between the Royal College of Art (RCA) and the Faculty of Art and Design, Swansea Institute, University of Wales. The hypothesis that dyslexic and/or dyspraxic students might be identifiable through indicators present in their drawings is tested.
A taxonomy of visual indicators of dyslexia/dyspraxia is...
Research suggests that expertise typically is acquired as a result of deliberate practice and a flexible approach to strategies for learning. Representational drawing is a complex skill which underpins performance in many branches of the visual arts and has the characteristics of other domains of expertise. It is therefore likely that approaches to...
In 1943 Theron Cain studied art students’ ability to draw a series of simple two-dimensional shapes, and found this ability to be correlated with formal drawing assessments at art school. This provided evidence that some aspects of drawing ability could be quantified, and that performance on simple drawing tasks could predict higher level attainmen...
Structural brain differences in relation to expertise have been demonstrated in a number of domains including visual perception, spatial navigation, complex motor skills and musical ability. However no studies have assessed the structural differences associated with representational skills in visual art. As training artists are inclined to be a het...
HavingintroducedtotheJapanese-EnglishbilingualswithmonolingualdyslexiainEnglish,wewereinterestedininvestigatingintotheperformanceonreading/spellinginJapaneseaswellasthereadingrelatedcognitiveabilitiesofthesebilingualindividuals,sothatwemightbeabletoascertainwhatmightbecausingthisdiscrepancybetweentheJapaneseandEnglishorthographies.
Individuals with drawing talent have previously been shown to exhibit enhanced local visual processing ability. The aim of the current study was to assess whether local processing biases associated with drawing ability result from a reduced ability to cohere local stimuli into global forms, or an increased ability to disregard global aspects of an...
Background / Purpose:
To explore the potential link between visual memory and drawing ability.
Main conclusion:
Visual long-term memory and drawing ability appear to be correlated but visual short-term memory and drawing are not.
Observational drawing is fundamental to artistic practice, by enhancing perceptual processing (Kozbelt, 2001; Seeley & Kozbelt, 2008) and creativity (Chan & Zhao, 2010; Pratt, 1985) regardless of an artist's specialist medium. However the perceptual and memorial processes underlying drawing ability remain poorly characterised. The aim of this explo...
Dyslexia Support Making a Difference to the StudentsThe Students Making a Difference to Dyslexia SupportDyslexia and DrawingConclusion
AcknowledgementsReferences
Learning to Perceive: Informing pedagogic practice through the empirical study of drawing Presentation Format: Paper Authors Qona Rankin (Royal College of Art)
Howard Riley (Swansea Metropolitan University)
Rebecca Chamberlain (University College London)
Nicola Brunswick (Middlesex University)
Chris McManus (University College London) Abstract Mas...
Many dyslexic readers receive intensive reading instruction throughout childhood, and they learn to ‘compensate’ for their early reading difficulties but other signs of dyslexia usually remain throughout life. Poor spelling, in particular, is a typical sign of dyslexia in adulthood, so much so that it has been identified as the best single predicto...
The association between dyslexia and superior visuospatial ability is, if anecdotal evidence is to be believed, robust. A small amount of empirical evidence also indicates that dyslexic individuals are disproportionately represented in professions and academic disciplines related to art and design; and biographies of great scientists (e.g. Thomas E...
This paper is a component of ongoing research by a team comprising an art school lecturer, a coordinator of dyslexic students' support, and psychologists interested in exploring correlations between drawing ability and factors such as mathematical ability, personality traits and dyslexia. It extends research by gathering and analysing data collecte...
Some art students, despite being at art school, cannot draw very well, and would like to be able to draw well. It has been suggested that poor drawing may be a particular problem for students with dyslexia (and a high proportion of art school students is dyslexic). In Study 1 we studied 277 art students, using a questionnaire to assess self-perceiv...
This paper addresses the RCA 'Include 09' conference theme of inclusivity from two standpoints: firstly, collaboration between researchers from fields including psychology, educational study support and studio drawing practice, which has revealed insights to students' learning difficulties in drawing not easily accessible through mono-disciplinary...
This paper reports on a collaborative research project between members of the Royal College of Art’s Drawing and Dyslexia Discussion Group , representing the Royal College of Art, and the Faculty of Art and Design at the Swansea Metropolitan University. The study seeks to identify any relationship between dyslexia and the way dyslexic students draw...
This paper assumes the following: • That between 15 and 25% of art and design students are dyslexic and /or dyspraxic. (Beverley Steiffert, 1998) • That a high proportion of these students are still under-achieving in higher education (David Grant, 2002) • That cognitive modelling (drawing and model-making) is central to art and design activity. (B...
