How Culture, Age, and Manual Dominance Affect Directionality in Drawing Side View Objects

Abstract

The aim of the present experiment was to investigate the extent to which the orientation of objects drawn in side view is a function of culture, age, and manual dominance. Right-handed French and Syrian children aged between 6 and 10 years and right-handed adults from the same cultural groups were asked to produce side views of faces, vehicles (car and airplane), self-centered tools with a handle (mug and toothbrush), object-centered tools with a handle (jug and hammer), and animals (dog and fish) using their dominant and nondominant hands. The French participants exhibited a leftward directional bias, whereas their Syrian counterparts displayed a rightward bias. However, no differences between the two cultural groups were observed in the 6-year-olds, who did not present any systematic directional bias in their drawings. Furthermore, regardless of culture, the children did not modify the orientation of the objects in their drawings as a function of the hand used, whereas the hand effect was strong in adults. Finally, despite their directional bias toward the right, the Syrian participants tended to draw the self- and object-centered tools facing leftward. These results are discussed with reference to the current literature on this topic.