Are portrait artists superior face recognizers? Limited impact of adult experience on face recognition ability.

Across 2 studies, the authors asked whether extensive experience in portrait art is associated with face recognition ability. In Study 1, 64 students completed a standardized face recognition test before and after completing a year-long art course that included substantial portraiture training. They found no evidence of an improvement in face recognition after training over and above what would be expected by practice alone. In Study 2, the authors investigated the possibility that more extensive experience might be needed for such advantages to emerge, by testing a cohort of expert portrait artists (N = 28), all of whom had many years of experience. In addition to memory for faces, they also explored memory for abstract art and for words in a paired-associate recognition test. The expert portrait artists performed similarly to a large, normative comparison sample on memory for faces and words but showed a small advantage for abstract art. Taken together, the results converge with existing literature to suggest that there is relatively little plasticity in face recognition in adulthood, at which point our substantial everyday experience with faces may have pushed us to the limits of our capabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record

Drawing on the right side of the brain: a voxel-based morphometry analysis of observational drawing.

Structural brain differences in relation to expertise have been demonstrated in a number of domains including visual perception, spatial navigation, complex motor skills and musical ability. However no studies have assessed the structural differences associated with representational skills in visual art. As training artists are inclined to be a heterogeneous group in terms of their subject matter and chosen media, it was of interest to investigate whether there would be any consistent changes in neural structure in response to increasing representational drawing skill. In the current study a cohort of 44 graduate and post-graduate art students and non-art students completed drawing tasks. Scores on these tasks were then correlated with the regional grey and white matter volume in cortical and subcortical structures. An increase in grey matter density in the left anterior cerebellum and the right medial frontal gyrus was observed in relation to observational drawing ability, whereas artistic training (art students vs. non-art students) was correlated with increased grey matter density in the right precuneus. This suggests that observational drawing ability relates to changes in structures pertaining to fine motor control and procedural memory, and that artistic training in addition is associated with enhancement of structures pertaining to visual imagery. The findings corroborate the findings of small-scale fMRI studies and provide insights into the properties of the developing artistic brain.

Local processing enhancements associated with superior observational drawing are due to enhanced perceptual functioning, not weak central coherence.

Individuals with drawing talent have previously been shown to exhibit enhanced local visual processing ability. The aim of the current study was to assess whether local processing biases associated with drawing ability result from a reduced ability to cohere local stimuli into global forms, or an increased ability to disregard global aspects of an image. Local and global visual processing ability was assessed in art students and controls using the Group Embedded Figures Task, Navon shape stimuli, the Block Design Task and the Autism Spectrum Quotient, whilst controlling for nonverbal IQ and artistic ability. Local processing biases associated with drawing appear to arise from an enhancement of local processing alongside successful filtering of global information, rather than a reduction in global processing. The relationship between local processing and drawing ability is independent of individual differences in nonverbal IQ and artistic ability. These findings have implications for bottom-up and attentional theories of observational drawing, as well as explanations of special skills in autism.