Drawing as a means to characterize memory and cognition

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Bainbridge, Wilma A.; Chamberlain, Rebecca; Wammes, Jeffrey and Fan, Judith. E.. 2024. Drawing as a means to characterize memory and cognition. Memory & Cognition, ISSN 0090-502X [Article] (In Press)

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Official URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-0...

Abstract or Description

As psychological research embraces more naturalistic questions and large-scale analytic methods, drawing has emerged as an exciting tool for studying cognition. Drawing provides rich information about how we view the world, ranging from largely veridical perceptual representations to abstracted meta-cognitive representations. Drawing also requires the integration of multiple processes (e.g., vision, memory, motor learning), and experience with drawing can have an impact on such processes. As a result, drawing presents several interesting cognitive questions, while also providing a way to gain insight into a multitude of others. This Special Issue features 25 cutting-edge studies utilizing drawing to reveal discoveries transversing fields in psychology. These diverse studies investigate drawing across children, young adults, older adults, and special populations such as individuals with blindness, anterograde amnesia, apraxia, and semantic dementia. These studies detail new discoveries about the mechanisms underlying memory, attention, mathematical reasoning, and other cognitive processes. They employ a range of methods including psychophysical experiments, deep learning, and neuroimaging. Finally, many of these studies cover topics about the impact of drawing as a process on other cognitive processes, including how drawing expertise impacts other processes like visual memory, or spatial abilities. Overall, this collection of studies paves the way for an exciting future of drawing as a commonplace tool used by psychologists to understand complex phenomena.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01618-4

Additional Information:

Funding: WAB is supported by the National Eye Institute (R01-EY034432). JEF is supported by NSF CAREER #2047191, NSF DRL #2400471, and an ONR Science of Autonomy grant. JDW is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2020-05958).

Keywords:

Drawing, Computer vision, Child development, Artists, Learning, Working memory, Cognitive representations, Visual features, Deep learning, Cognitive impairment, Drawing benefit, Scenes

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Psychology

Dates: