I may have just learned why I struggled in art class so much.
The teacher tried really hard to help me learn how to add a congruent shadow to what I was drawing in an attempt to teach me how to make the item more realistic and identifiable as an object. But every time I added the shadow, the item no longer looked like what I was trying to show, but the teacher would say “see doesn’t this look better now?” And was confused when I said no.
According to this study, autistic people (children in the case of the study, but these things don’t change as you age) found it harder to identify objects if they had a congruent or incongruent shadow, but easily identified the item when shown without cast shadow (“floating in space” as art teachers would describe it). In contrast, control children who were neurotypical and had no history of anything else which could affect this kind of thing struggled to identify the object without the cast shadow, and as expected the one with the incongruent shadow.
It’s absolutely fascinating that finding out that I’m autistic has actually answered soooooo many questions I had about why I experience the world so differently.
And I guess it means that it’s ok for me to draw things without cast shadows if that’s what I am able to then enjoy looking at when finished. It also explains why I prefer colouring books to more traditional artistic pursuits because there is a clearly defined edge to the pictures and no expectation that you should be adding shadows outside of the lines.
Any other autistic people noticed this with themselves?
Oh this is absolutely fascinating… and explains a lot about what I struggle about art and trying to comprehend 3d form. Particularly notable was the idea that cast shadows and second order contrasts added noise, and interfered with and prevailed over processing an object.
This is honestly one of the big reasons I struggle with drawing from life actually, since I have to compete with the shadows in order to comprehend the form I am attempting to draw. Outside of just cast shadows, if you look at my art, you will see that I am only concerned with first-order (luminance-defined) shadows. And tbh, the way I draw them they don’t exactly behave like shadows, and only serve to define the object for me in a way that makes sense to me and nothing else. Even then, I try to keep them as simple as possible because anything more would be too much for what my brain can process. I would never touch the complex second-order (texture-defined) shadows because they actually keep me from recognizing an object. It is interesting stuff. The way they called it “noise” really does help me understand why it becomes so hard for me.
Also interesting is this is probably why I am unable to sleep without bright light directly around my head at least, because everything becomes unrecognizable otherwise and I become unable to identify even my own room.
Perception of Shadows in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders
DarkestElemental616 