Beyond Modularity

Karmiloff-Smith, A. Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science. MIT Press. November, 1992.

Summary:

Piaget's child development theory describes how children develop when their minds mature with age. He observed transitions and major events when this occurs, such as when children learn object permanence.

Karmiloff-Smith presents research challenging the assumption that growth happens in such steps. Instead, the author shows how many human functions (language, math, physics, drawing) are innate in very young children even before they are verbal. For instance, infants look longer at images that even humans would consider novel (such as objects that do not obey a perceived grouping, p. 68).

Discussion:

This book was really well-written and I enjoyed the break from regular computer science reading to read an almost pure psychology book. The idea that drawing is innate in humans is reaffirms our lab's claim that sketching is "natural and intuitive".

Drawing and the Non-verbal Mind

Lange-Kuttner, C. and Vitner, A. "Drawing and the Non-Verbal Mind: A Life-Span Perspective." Cambridge University Press, September 15, 2008.

Summary:

The editors discussed hundreds of experiments dealing with drawings, most focused on children.

Some interesting points of note are:

1. Young children (3-4 yrs) often cannot recognize their own drawings after some time has passed since the original. (p. 55)
   
2. Children often have a "constant depiction strategy", such as drawing everything as a sunburst or as a scribbled dot. The depiction looks closer to the actual object with age. (p. 64)
   
3. A drawing can be affected by the question and how the child interprets the objects, such as individual objects or in a group. Grouping of objects can happen more often if the objects are similar: "two circles" vs. "circle and triangle" (pp. 165-173)
   
4. People suffering from diseases such as semantic dementia often forget the distinguishing characteristic of an object they should be drawing after a short period of time. (Rhino -> generic animal, p. 286)

Discussion:

The findings presented are too numerous to list, so I simply mentioned the ones I found most interesting. Actual child or mental development would be difficult to measure using sketch recognition techniques (the drawings are simply too abstract). If I ever work with children, items 2 and 3 will probably be helpful with either distinguishing between children or simply with the phrasing of the questions to the children.