We describe the ongoing development of a psychometric test to measure understanding of three-dimensional (3-D) concepts represented in drawings. The test consists of five subtests requiring participants to complete timed choice tasks previously used in experimental investigations of 3-D understanding, and a new subtest based on the idea of true length. We examined performance in terms of accura...

Lexical alignment refers to the adoption of one's interlocutor's lexical items. Accounts of the mechanisms underlying such lexical alignment differ (among other aspects) in the role assigned to addressee-centered behavior. In this study, we used a triadic communicative situation to test which factors may modulate the extent to which participants' lexical alignment reflects addressee-centered be...

Agents consistently appear prior to Patients in sentences, manual signs, and drawings, and Agents are responded to faster when presented in visual depictions of events. We hypothesized that this "Agent advantage" reflects Agents' role in event structure. We investigated this question by manipulating the depictions of Agents and Patients in preparatory actions in wordless visual narratives. We f...

I am indebted to Dr Robert R Coleman of The Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame, for his kind assistance with the Biblioteca Ambrosiana drawings collection, to Dr Kliment P Gatzinsky of the Department of Anatomy, Gothenburg University, Sweden, for his consideration of the anatomical content of the paper, and to Mr William Schupbach, curator of the Iconographic Collections of the Wellco...

Given the increased attention paid to the development of arts in healthcare settings, the need for a formalised training framework to enable artists to work comfortably and safely in healthcare settings has become pressing. This paper sets out a review of literature and best practice regarding the training of professional artists wishing to work in healthcare settings. The authors' research con...

Designers use drawings to explore alternatives and to test their ideas employing different symbols and configurations for different design concerns, or tasks. We argue that designer's attention to, and interest in, these various tasks can be determined by examining the drawing symbols and spatial arrangements. We have conducted several empirical studies on design and drawing to determine whethe...

This paper discusses issues in evolutionary art related to Art Theory and Aesthetics with a view to better understanding how they might contribute to both research and practice. Aesthetics is a term often used in evolutionary art, but is regularly used with conflicting or näıve understandings. A selective history of evolutionary art as art is provided, with an examination of some art theories f...

Leg-to-body ratio (LBR) predicts evolutionary fitness, and is therefore expected to influence bodily attractiveness. Previous investigations of LBR attractiveness have used a wide variety of stimuli, including line drawings, silhouettes, and computer-generated images based on anthropometric data. In two studies, community samples of heterosexual women from the USA rated the attractiveness of ma...

Participants categorized left- and right-pointing line drawings presented together with pictures, whose pointing direction (to the left or right) was ambiguous (spatially ambiguous pictures; Experiments 1 and 2) or that pointed neither to the left nor to the right (spatially neutral pictures; Experiment 3). Subsequently, the spatially ambiguous and neutral pictures were used in a Simon task, wh...