Perceptual anthropology: The cultural salience of symmetry

American Anthropologist

Volumn 101, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 547-562

  Washburn, Dorothy ^a  

^a Maryland Institute   (United States)

Author keywords

Metaphorical readings; Perceptual universals; Symmetry of pattern; Worldview in design structure

Indexed keywords

EID: 0033272417     PISSN: 00027294     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/aa.1999.101.3.547     Document Type: Article

References (154)

1. Almeida, Mauro W. Barbosa de 1990 Symmetry and Entropy: Mathematical Metaphors in the Work of Lévi-Strauss. Current Anthropology 31:367-385.
2. Arnheim, Rudolf 1974 Art and Visual Perception. Berkeley: University of California Press.
3. Arnold, Dean E. 1983 Design Structure and Community Organization in Quinua, Peru. In Structure and Cognition in Art. Dorothy Washburn, ed. Pp. 56-73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Arnoult, M. D. 1960 Prediction of Perceptual Responses from Structural Characteristics of the Stimulus. Perceptual and Motor Skills 11:261-268.
5. Ascher, Marcia 1991 Ethnomathematics. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
6. Attneave, Fred 1954 Some Informational Aspects of Visual Perception. Psychological Review 61:183-193.
7. 1955 Symmetry, Information, and Memory for Patterns. The American Journal of Psychology 68:209-222.
8. 1957 Physical Determinants of the Judged Complexity of Shapes. Journal of Experimental Psychology 53:221-227.
9. Austin, Michael 1995 Art and Religion as Metaphor. British Journal of Aesthetics 35:145-153.
10. Barkow, Jerome H., Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, eds. 1992 The Adapted Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.
11. Barlow, H., and B. Reeves 1979 The Versatility and Absolute Efficiency of Detecting Minor Symmetry in Random Dot Displays. Vision Research 19:783-793.
12. Berlyne, D. E. 1971 Aesthetics and Psychobiology. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts.
13. Bier, Carol 1992 Elements of Plane Symmetry in Oriental Carpets. Textile Museum Journal 31:53-70.
14. Bingham, Geoffrey P., and Michael M. Muchisky 1993 Center of Mass Perception: Perturbation of Symmetry. Perception & Psychophysics 54:633-639.
15. Boas, Franz 1955 Primitive Art. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
16. Boles, Martha, and Rochelle Newman 1990 Universal Patterns: The Golden Relationship: Art, Math & Nature. Book 1. Revised edition. Bradford, MA: Pythagorean Press.
17. Bornstein, Marc H., K. Ferdinandsen, and C. Gross 1981 Perception of Symmetry in Infancy. Developmental Psychology 17:82-86.
18. Bornstein, Marc H., and Sharon J. Krinsky 1985 Perception of Symmetry in Infancy: The Salience of Vertical Symmetry and the Perception of Pattern Wholes. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 39:1-19.
19. Brown, Donald E. 1991 Human Universals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
20. Bruce, Vicky G., and Michael J. Morgan 1975 Violations of Symmetry and Repetition in Visual Patterns. Perception 4:239-249.
21. Chipman, Susan F. 1977 Complexity and Structure in Visual Patterns. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 106:269-301.
22. Clement, David E., and Carl F. R. Weiman 1970 Instructions, Strategies, and Pattern Uncertainty in a Visual Discrimination Task. Perception & Psychophysics 7:333-336.
23. Crocker, J. Christopher 1977 The Social Functions of Rhetorical Form. In The Social Use of Metaphor. J. David Sapir and J. Christopher Crocker. eds. Pp. 33-66. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
24. Crowe, Donald W. 1971 The Geometry of African Art. Part I: Bakuba Art. Journal of Geometry 1:169-182.
25. 1975 The Geometry of African Art Part 2. A Catalog of Benin Patterns. Historia Mathematica 2:253-271.
26. 1982 The Geometry of African Art. Part 3. The Smoking Pipes of Begho. In The Geometric Vein. C. Davis, B. Grunbaum, and F. Sherk, eds. Pp. 177-189. New York: Springer.
27. 1992 Symmetry in the Aboriginal Art of Australia. Symmetry: Culture and Science 3:227-240.
28. 1993 Admiralty Islands Spear Decorations: A Minicatalog of pmm Patterns. Symmetry: Culture and Science 4:385-396.
29. Davis, Susan T., and John C. Johnke 1994 Unity and the Golden Section: Rules for Aesthetic Choice? American Journal of Psychology 104:257-277.
30. Day, Hy 1968 The Importance of Symmetry and Complexity in the Evaluation of Complexity, Interest and Pleasingness. Psychonomic Science 10:339-340.
31. Dember, William N., and Joel S. Warm 1979 Psychology of Perception. 2nd edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston.
32. Dennett, Daniel C. 1995 Darwin's Dangerous Idea. New York: Simon & Schuster.
33. Dent, Cathy H. 1987 Developmental Studies of Perception and Metaphor: The Twain Shall Meet. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 2:53-71.
34. Dent-Read, Cathy H., Gary Klein, and Robert Eggleston 1994 Metaphor in Visual Displays Designed to Guide Action. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 9:211-232.
35. Dent-Read, Cathy H., and Agnes Szokolszky 1993 Where Do Metaphors Come From? Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 8:227-242.
36. Deregowski, J. B. 1978 Role of Symmetry in Pattern Reproduction. British Journal of Psychology 69:217-224.
37. Dissanayake, Ellen 1988 What Is Art For? Seattle: University of Washington Press.
38. 1992 Homo Aestheticus. New York: The Free Press.
39. Dodwell, Peter C., and Terry Caelli, eds. 1984 Figural Synthesis. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
40. Donnay, J. D. H., and G. Donnay 1985 Symmetry and Antisymmetry in Maori Rafter Designs. Empirical Studies of the Arts 3:23-45.
41. Eisenman, Russell, and H. K. Gellens 1968 Preference for Complexity-Simplicity and Symmetry-Asymmetry. Perceptual and Motor Skills 26:888-890.
42. El-Said, Issam, and Ayse Parman 1976 Geometric Concepts in Islamic Art. London: World of Islam Festival Pub. Co.
43. Enquist, Magnus, and Anthony Arak 1995 The Illusion of Symmetry? The Journal of NIH Research 7:54-55.
44. Epstein, Ruth L., and Peter J. Gamlin 1994 Young Children's Comprehension of Simple and Complex Metaphors Presented in Pictures and Words. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 9:179-191.
45. Fernandez, James W. 1974 The Mission of Metaphor in Expressive Culture. Current Anthropology 15:119-145.
46. Fisher, Celia B., Kay Ferdinandsen, and Marc H. Bornstein 1981 The Role of Symmetry in Infant Form Discrimination. Child Development 52:457-462.
47. Forceville, Charles 1996 Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. London: Routledge.
48. Fox, John 1975 The Use of Structural Diagnostics in Recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 104:57-67.
49. Fox, Robin 1989 The Search for Society. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
50. Frame, Mary 1986 The Visual Images of Fabric Structures in Ancient Peruvian Art. In Junius Bird Conference on Andean Textiles. Washington, DC: Textile Museum.
51. 1991 Paracas Necropolis Headbands as System Templates. In Paracas: Art & Architecture. Anne Paul, ed. Pp. 110-171. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
52. Freyd, Jennifer, and Barbara Tversky 1984 Force of Symmetry in Form Perception. American Journal of Psychology 97:109-126.
53. Garner, Wendell R. 1970 Good Patterns Have Few Alternatives. American Scientist 58:34-42.
54. Gombrich, E. H. 1979 The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
55. Grammer, Karl, and Randy Thornhill 1994 Human (Homo sapiens) Facial Attractiveness and Sexual Selection: The Role of Symmetry and Averageness. Journal of Comparative Psychology 108:233-242.
56. Granovskaya, R. M., I. Y. Bereznaya, and A. N. Grigorieva 1987 Perception of Form and Forms of Perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
57. Greenberg, Laura 1975 Art as a Structural System: A Study of Hopi Pottery Designs. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 2:33-50.
58. Grunbaum, Branko 1990 Periodic Ornamentation of the Fabric Plane: Lessons from Peruvian Fabrics. Symmetry 1:45-68.
59. Grunbaum, Branko, and G. C. Shephard 1987 Tilings and Patterns. New York: W.H. Freeman.
60. Guss, David M. 1989 To Weave and Sing: Art, Symbol, and Narrative in the South American Rain Forest. Berkeley: University of California Press.
61. Hage, Per 1979 Graph Theory as a Structural Model in Cultural Anthropology. In Annual Review of Anthropology, 8. Bernard Siegel, Alan R. Beals, and Stephen A. Tyler, eds. Pp. 115-136. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc.
62. Hanson, Allan, and Louise Hanson 1983 Counterpoint in Maori Culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
63. Hargittai, Istvan, ed. 1986 Symmetry: Unifying Human Understanding. New York: Pergamon Press.
64. 1989 Symmetry 2: Unifying Human Understanding. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
65. Hargittai, Istvan, and Magdolna Hargittai 1994 Symmetry: A Unifying Concept. Bolinas, CA: Shelter Publications.
66. Hatcher, Evelyn Payne 1974 Visual Metaphors: A Formal Analysis of Navajo Art. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co.
67. Hausman, Carl R. 1989 Metaphor and Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
68. Hendee, William R., and Peter N. T. Wells, eds. 1993 The Perception of Visual Information. New York: Springer-Verlag.
69. Howes, David, ed. 1991 The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
70. Humphrey, G. Keith, and Diane E. Humphrey 1989 The Role of Structure in Infant Visual Pattern Perception. Canadian Journal of Psychology 43:165-182.
71. Humphrey, G. Keith, Diane E. Humphrey, Darwin W. Muir, and Peter C. Dodwell 1986 Pattern Perception in Infants: Effects of Structure and Transformation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 41:128-148.
72. Jolles, Frank 1993 Zulu Beadwork as a Record of Historical Events: Some Theoretical Considerations. In Democratising Art and Art/ Architectural History in South Africa. Pp. 60-78. Natal: Technikon.
73. Julesz, Bella 1971 Foundations of Cyclopean Perception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
74. Keil, Frank C. 1986 Conceptual Domains and the Acquisition of Metaphor. Cognitive Development 1:73-96.
75. Kennard, Edward A. 1982 Metaphor and Magic: Key Concepts in Hopi Culture and Their Linguistic Forms. In Anthropology for the Eighties. Johnnetta B. Cole, ed. Pp. 82-87. New York: The Free Press.
76. Kennedy, John M. 1982 Metaphorin Pictures. Perception 11:589-605.
77. Kittay, Eva Feder 1987 Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
78. Kowner, Rotem 1996 Facial Asymmetry and Attractiveness Judgment in Developmental Perspective. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 22:662-675.
79. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson 1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
80. Lakoff, George, and Mark Turner 1989 More Than Cool Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
81. Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1954 The Mathematics of Man. International Social Science Bulletin 6:581-590.
82. Locher, Paul J., and Calvin F. Nodine 1989 The Perceptual Value of Symmetry. Computers and Mathematics with Applications 17(4-6):475-484.
83. Locher, Paul J., and Gerda Smets 1992 The Influence of Stimulus Dimensionality and Viewing Orientation on Detection of Symmetry in Dot Patterns. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 30:43-46.
84. Locher, Paul J., Pieter Jan Stappers, and Kees Overbeeke In Press The Role of Balance as an Organizing Design Principle Underlying Adults' Compositional Strategies for Creating Visual Displays. Acta Psychologica.
85. Locher, Paul J., and Johan Wagemans 1993 Effects of Element Type and Spatial Grouping on Symmetry Detection. Perception 22:565-587.
86. Lockhead, Gregory R., and James R. Pomerantz, eds. 1991 The Perception of Structure. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
87. MacGillavry, Caroline H. 1976 Fantasy & Symmetry: The Periodic Drawings of M. C. Escher. New York: Abrams.
88. Marr, D. 1982 Vision. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
89. Moller, Anders 1992 Female Swallow Preference for Symmetrical Male Sexual Ornaments. Nature 357:238-240.
90. Morphy, Howard 1991 Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
91. Muir, Darwin W., Diane E. Humphrey, and G. Keith Humphrey 1994 Pattern and Space Perception in Young Infants. Spatial Vision 8:141-165.
92. Olson, David R. 1988 Or What's A Metaphor For? Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 3:215-222.
93. Olson, Richard K., and Fred Attneave 1970 What Variables Produce Similarity Grouping? The American Journal of Psychology 83:1-21.
94. Ortony, Andrew 1979 Beyond Literal Similarity. Psychological Review 86:161-180.
95. 1981 Understanding Metaphors. In Psychology and the Arts. David O'Hare, ed. Pp. 148-174. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
96. Palmer, Stephen E. 1985 The Role of Symmetry in Shape Perception. Acta Psychologica 59:67-90.
97. 1989 Reference Frames in the Perception of Shape and Orientation. In Object Perception: Structure and Process. B. Shepp and S. Ballesteros, eds. Pp. 121-163. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
98. 1992 Modern Theories of Gestalt Perception. In Understanding Vision. Glyn W. Humphreys, ed. Pp 39-70. Oxford: Blackwell.
99. Palmer, Stephen E., and Kathleen Hernenway 1978 Orientation and Symmetry: Effects of Multiple, Rotational, and Near Symmetries. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 4:691-702.
100. Parker, D. M., and J. B. Deregowski 1990 Perception and Artistic Style, Amsterdam: North-Holland.
101. Paul, Anne 1997 Color Patterns on Paracas Necropolis Weavings: A Combinatorial Language on Ancient Cloth. Techniques & Culture 29:113-153
102. Pinker, Steven 1984 Visual Cognition: An Introduction. Cognition 18:1-63.
103. Polidora, V. J. 1966 Stimulus Correlates of Visual Pattern Discrimination by Monkeys: Multidimensional Analyses. Perception & Psychophysics 1:405-414.
104. Rappaport, Maurice 1957 The Role of Redundancy in the Discrimination of Visual Forms. Journal of Experimental Psychology 53:3-10.
105. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo 1985 Basketry as Metaphor: Arts and Crafts of the Desana Indians of the Northwest Amazon. Occasional Papers, 5, Museum of Cultural History. Los Angeles: University of California.
106. Rock, Irvin 1973 Orientation and Form. New York: Academic Press.
107. 1985 Perception and Knowledge. Acta Psychologica 59: 3-22.
108. Rock, Irvin, and Robin Leaman 1963 An Experimental Analysis of Visual Symmetry. Acta Psychologica 21:171-183.
109. Roe, Peter G. 1982 The Cosmic Zygote: Cosmology in the Amazon Basin. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
110. Royer, Fred L. 1981 Detection of Symmetry. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 7:1186-1210.
111. Sapir, J. David 1977 The Anatomy of Metaphor. In The Social Use of Metaphor. J. D. Sapir and J. C. Crocker, eds. Pp. 3-32. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
112. Senechal, Marjorie, and George Fleck, eds. 1977 Patterns of Symmetry. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
113. Shepard, Roger N. 1994 Perceptual-Cognitive Universals as Reflections of the World. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 1:2-28.
114. Shepard, Roger N., and Jacqueline Metzler 1971 Mental Rotation of Three-Dimensional Objects. Science 171:701-703.
115. Shepp, Bryan E., and Soledad Ballesteros, eds. 1989 Object Perception: Structure and Process. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
116. Solso, Robert L. 1994 Cognition and the Visual Arts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
117. Sperber, Dan 1985 Anthropology and Psychology: Towards an Epidemiology of Representation. Man (n.s.) 20:73-89.
118. Stevens, Peter S. 1980 Handbook of Regular Patterns. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
119. Stewart, Ian 1995 Nature's Numbers. New York: Basic Books.
120. Stewart, Ian, and Martin Golubitsky 1992 Fearful Symmetry. London: Penguin.
121. Stoller, Paul 1989 The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
122. Szilagyi, Peter G., and John C. Baird 1977 A Quantitative Approach to the Study of Visual Symmetry. Perception & Psychophysics 22:287-292.
123. Thornhill, Randy 1992 Female Preference for the Pheromone of Males with Low Fluctuating Asymmetry in the Japanese Scorpionfly (Panorpa japonica mesoptera). Behavioral Ecology 3: 277-283.
124. Thornhill, Randy, and Steven W. Gangestad 1993 Human Facial Beauty. Human Nature 4:237-269.
125. Tomonaga, Masaki, T. Matsuzawa, K. Fujita, and J. Yamamoto 1991 Emergence of Symmetry in a Visual Conditional Discrimination by Chimpanzees. Psychological Reports 68:51-60.
126. Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides 1992 The Psychological Foundations of Culture. In The Adapted Mind. J. Barkow, L. Cosmides and J. Tooby, eds. Pp. 19-136. New York: Oxford University Press.
127. Triesman, Anne 1986a Features and Objects in Visual Processing. Scientific American 255(5):114-125.
128. 1986b Properties, Parts, and Objects. In Handbook of Perception and Human Performance II, Cognitive Processes and Performance. K. R. Boff, L. Kaufman, and J. P. Thomas, eds. Pp. 1-70. New York: J. Wiley & Sons.
129. Van Esterik, Penny 1979 Symmetry and Symbolism in Ban Chiang Painted Pottery. Journal of Anthropological Research 35:495-508.
130. Vetter, T., T. Poggio, and H. H. Bulthoff 1994 The Importance of Symmetry and Virtual Views in Three-Dimensional Object Recognition. Current Biology 4:18-23.
131. Voloshinov, Alexander V. 1996 Symmetry as a Superprinciple of Science and Art. Leonardo 29:109-113.
132. Vosniadou, Stella, and Andrew Ortony 1983 The Emergence of the Literal-Metaphorical-Anomalous Distinction in Young Children. Child Development 54:154-161.
133. Washburn, Dorothy K. 1977a A Symmetry Classification of Pueblo Ceramic Design. In Discovering Past Behavior. P. Grebinger, ed. Pp. 101-121. New York: Gordon Breach.
134. 1977b A Symmetry Analysis of Upper Gila Area Ceramic Design. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 68. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
135. 1980 A Reanalysis of Grave Goods from Pueblo Bonito: Some Mexican Affiliations. In New Frontiers in the Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the Greater Southwest. C. L. Riley and B. C. Hedrick, eds. Transactions 72(4):70-84.
136. 1983 Symmetry Analysis of Ceramic Design: Two Tests of the Method on Neolithic Material from Greece and the Aegean. In Structure and Cognition in Art. D. Washburn, ed. Pp. 138-164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
137. 1984 The Usefulness of Typological Analysis for Understanding Aspects of Southwestern Prehistory: Some Conflicting Returns from Design Analysis. In Regional Analysis of Prehistoric Ceramic Variation. A. P. Sullivan and J. L. Hantman, eds. Pp. 120-134. Anthropological Papers, 31. Tempe: Arizona State University.
138. 1986 Symmetry Analysis of Yurok, Karok, and Hupa Indian Basket Designs. Empirical Studies of the Arts 4:19-45.
139. 1987 The Neighbor Factor: Basket Designs in Northern and Central California. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 9:146-173.
140. 1989 The Property of Symmetry and the Concept of Ethnic Style. In Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity. S. Shennan, ed. Pp. 157-173. London: Allen & Unwin.
141. 1990 Style, Classification, and Ethnicity: Design Categories on Bakuba Raffia Cloth. Transactions, 80(3). Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
142. 1995 Perception, Geometry, and Style. In Style, Society and Person. C. Carr and J. Neitzel, eds. Pp. 101-122. New York: Plenum Press.
143. Washburn, Dorothy K., and Donald W. Crowe 1988 Symmetries of Culture: Theory and Practice of Plane Pattern Analysis. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
144. Washburn, Dorothy, and Diane Humphrey N.d. Gender and Training Factors in Preferences for Plane Pattern Symmetries.
145. Washburn, Dorothy, and R. G. Matson 1985 Use of Multidimensional Scaling to Display Sensitivity of Symmetry Analysis of Patterned Design to Spatial and Chronological Change: Examples from Anasazi Prehistory. In Decoding Prehistoric Ceramics. B. Nelson, ed. Pp. 75-101. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
146. Washburn, Dorothy, and Andrea Petitto 1991 Southern Laotian Textiles: Relationships between Pattern Structure and Weaving Technology. Ars Textrina 15: 35-66.
147. 1993 An Ethnoarchaeological Perspective on Textile Categories of Identification and Function. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 12:150-172.
148. Wenderoth, Peter 1994 The Salience of Vertical Symmetry. Perception 23:221-236.
149. Witherspoon, Gary, and Glen Peterson 1995 Dynamic Symmetry and Holistic Asymmetry in Navajo and Western Art and Cosmology. New York: Peter Lang.
150. Wolfe, Jeremy M., and Stacia R. Friedman-Hill 1992 On the Role of Symmetry in Visual Search. Psychological Science 3:194-198.
151. Wyckoff, Lydia L. 1985 Designs and Factions. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
152. Zaslavsky, Claudia 1973 Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Culture. Boston: Prindle, Weber & Schmidt.
153. Zaslow, Bert 1981 Pattern Dissemination in the Prehistoric Southwest and Mesoamerica. Anthropological Research Papers, 25. Tempe: Arizona State University.
154. Zaslow, Bert, and Alfred E. Dittert 1977 Pattern Mathematics and Archaeology. Anthropological Research Papers, 2. Tempe: Arizona State University.