PSYCHOLOGY

The aim of the article is to present a summary of some of dthe findings from studies of pictorial perception in different culturla groups,including the author's own research and that of other (e.g.Hudson,1960,1962).It is often not clear when he is referring to his own(and that of his co-workers) rather than the someone else's research,and it is only through reading other sources(e.g. serpell,1976) that this can be achived.

The nature of the studies discussed is cross-cultural,since a comparision is being made between the interpretation of 3-D pictures by members of western cultures(unspecified) and variousAfrican countries (e.g. zambia).However, the method used either the particiant's nationality or the characteristic of being 3-D or 2-D perceiver ( based on, say,Hudson's pictures tests).In both cases,the investigator is, of course,unable to manipulate the independent variable: it is a characteristics the participant already possess and is selected accordingly.The method is sometimes referred to as expost facto experimentation(see coolican,1994).(Note that cross-cultural studies as such are not a method of collecting data but rather an overall approach to the study of human behaviour,just as cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches are in development psycholiogy.Exactly how data is collected will depend on the purpose of the study,the age of the participants,the kind of behaviours under investigation,and so on-the overall approach may involve the use of experiments,observation or some combination of different methods).

Deregowski also considers some explanations which have been put forward for cultural differences in perception,but no empirical support for these is provided.

Do people of one culture precive a picture differently from people of another?Experiments in Africa show that such difference exist and that the perception of pictures calls for some form of learning.The picture is a patterns of line,shaded area on flat surface that depicts of the real world.The ability to find out the object is very in most of the culture which is often taken for granting such that recognition is universal in living being or man.Although the children do not learn to read until they are about six years old,child are capable of such recognition.If pictorial recognition is univerasl,do pictures offers us a linqua franca for intercultural communication?There is evidence that they do no:cross-cultural studies have shown that they are persistent differences in the way pictorial information is interpreted by people of various cultures.These differences merit investigation not only because improvement in communication may be achieved by a further understanding of them but also because they may provide us with a better insight into the nature of human perceptual mechanisms.

Report difficulty in pictorial perception by members of remote,illiterate tribes have periodically been made by missionaries,explorers and anthropologists.Robert Laws, a scottish missionary active in Nyasaland (Now in Mlalwi) at the end of the nineteen century,reported:'Take a picture in black and white and the natives cannot see it.You may tell the natives,"This is a picture of an ox and a dog,"and the people will look at it and look at you and that look says that they consider you a liar.Perhaps you say again,"Yes,that is a picture of an ox and a dog."Well,perhaps they will tell you what they think this time.If there are a few boys about,you say:"This is really a picture of an ox and a dog.Look at the horn of the ox, and there is his tail"And the boy will say:"Oh! yes and there is the dog's nose and eyes and ears!"Then the old people will look again and clasp their hand and say,"Oh! yes it is a dog."When a man has seen a pictures for the first time,his book education has begun."

Mrs Donald Fraser who taught health care to African in the 1920s, had similar experiences.This is her description of an African woman slowly discovring that a picture she was looking at portrayed a human head in profile:"She discovered in turn the nose,the mouth,the eye,but where was the other eye?I tried by turning my profile to explain why she could only see one eye byt she hopped round to my other side to poing out that I possessed a second eye which the other lacked."

There were also ,however,reports of vivid and instant responses to pictures:'When all the people were quickly seated,the first picture flashed of the sheet was that of an elephant.The wildest excitement immediatly prevailed,many of the people jumpind up and shouting,fearing the beast must be alive,while those nearest to the sheet sprang up and fled.The chief himself crept stalthily forward and peeped behing the sheed to see if the animal had a body,and when he discovered that the animal's body was only the thickness of the sheet,a great roar broke the stillness of the night.'

Thus,the evidence gleaned from line insightful but unsystematic observations quoted is ambiguous.The laborious way some of these Africans pieced together a pictures suggests that some form of learning is required to recognize pictures.In ability to object would render meaningless,abstract patterns until the viewer had learned to perceived a being meaningless,abstract patterns untill the viewer had learned tho interpret and organize recognition is largly independent of learning and that even people from cultures where pictorial materials are uncommon will recognize items in pictures,provided that the pictures show familiar objects.It has been shown that an unsophisticated matured African from a remote village unlikely to choose the wrong toy animal when asked to match the toy to a pictures of,say,a lion.Given a photograph of a kangaroo,however he is likely to choose at random from the array of toys.Yet one can argue that this is sample was not as culturally remote as those descrived above.It is therefore probaly safer to assume that utter in comparision of pictorial material may be observed only in extremely isolated human populations.

Conventions for depicting the spatial arrangement of three dimensional objects in a flat pictures can also give rise to difficulties in perception.These conventions give the observer depth cues that tell him the objects are not all the same distance from him.Inability of interpret such cues is bound to lead to misunderstanding of the menaing of the pictures as a whol.William Hudson,who was then working at the National Institute for Personal Research in Johannesburg.Stumbled on such a difficulties in testing South African Bantu workers.His discovery led him to construct a pictorial work in cross-cultural studies of perception.

Hundson's test consist of a serials of pictures in which they are various combinations of three pictorial depth cues.The first cue is familial size,which call for the larger of two known objects to be drawn considerably smaller to indicate that it is farther away.The second cue is overlap,in which portions of nearer objects overlab and obscure portions of objects that are farther away; a hill is partly obscured by another hill that is closer to the viewer.The third cue is perspective, the convergence of lines known to be parallel to suggest distance;lines representing the edges of a road converge in the distance.In all but one of his test,Hudson omitted on entire group of powerful depth cues:density gradient.

Density gradients are provided by any elements of uniform size:bricks in all wall or pebbles on a beach.The elements are drawn larger or smaller depending on whether they are nearer to the viewer or farther from him.

Hundson's test has been applied in many parts of Africa with subjects drawn from the variety of tribal and linguistic groups.The subject were shown on picture at a time and asked to name all the objects in the pictures in order to determine whether or not the elements were correctly recognized.Then they were asked about the relation between the objects.(What is the man doing?What is closer to the man?)If subject takes note of the depth cues and make the correct interpretations,he is classified as having three dimensional perception.If the depth cues are not taken into account by the subject he is said to have two dimensional perception.The results from the African tribale subjects were unequivocal:both children and adults found it difficult to perceive depth in the appeared to persist through most educational and social levels.

Further experimentation revelled that the phenomenon was not simply the result of dthe pictorial material used in the test.Subjects were shown a drawing of two squares,one behind dthe other and connected by a single rod.They were also given sticks and modeling clay and asked to build a model of what they swa.If Hudson's test is valid,people designated as two dimensional perceivers should the drawing,whereas those designated as three dimensional preceivers should build a cube like object.When primary school boys and unskilled workers in Zambia were given Hundson's test and then asked to build models,a few of the subjects who had been classified as three dimensional responders by the test made flat models.A substantial number of the subjects classified as two dimensional perceivers built three dimensional models.Thus Hundson's test although it is more server than the construction task appears to measure the same variable.