The moon illusion in children's drawings
by Helen E. Ross, Adele Cowie
International Journal of Arts and Technology (IJART), Vol. 3, No. 2/3, 2010

Abstract: The full moon subtends an angle of 0.5° and occupies about 1/100th of the landscape in a standard photograph. Artists usually draw the moon much larger than this, particularly when low on the horizon. The relatively large appearance near the horizon is known as the moon illusion. We tested children aged 4-12 years and adults aged about 21 years, asking them to draw the apparent size of the moon on a photocopy of a landscape, both near the horizon and high in the sky. The mean ratio of the low to high moons was 1.57, and the size of the illusion did not vary significantly with age. The illusion, like size-constancy in the near distance, is well established by age 4.

Online publication date: Wed, 07-Apr-2010

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