Drawing and Cognition: Descriptive and Experimental Studies of Graphic Production Processes

by Peter van Sommers

Overview

When we do something as apparently simple as sketching a map, constructing a working diagram, or drawing an imaginary face to amuse ourselves, we utilise a complex set of abilities: perceptual, mechanical, strategic, representational, pragmatic. Peter van Sommers sets out to distinguish and describe the various layers of organisation in the drawing performances of ordinary people - adults and children. Drawings, like language, have a multi-layered structure. Because much of the structure represents tacit knowledge, a variety of special observational and analytic methods must be developed to provide a comprehensive empirical account of graphic production. This book illuminates the link between laboratory methods and the study of an important skill exercised in the real world. It will be of interest to a wide range of cognitive psychologists as well as to many neuropsychologists and others concerned with art, aesthetics, writing and script evolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521110631
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/07/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. Basic executive constraints in drawing; 2. Maintaining paper contact, anchoring and planning; 3. The reproduction of rectilinear figures; 4. The production of curvilinear forms; 5. The impact of meaning on executive strategies; 6. Simple representational drawing; 7. Difficult graphic tasks: a failure in perceptual analysis?; 8. Stability and evolution in children's drawings; 9. Innovations, primitives, contour and space in children's drawings; 10. Children's repeated drawings: how are innovations coded?; 11. The pragmatics of everyday graphic production; References; Index.