In:
Psychological Science, SAGE Publications, Vol. 27, No. 11 ( 2016-11), p. 1486-1497
Abstract:
Brief verbal descriptions of people’s bodies (e.g., “curvy,” “long-legged”) can elicit vivid mental images. The ease with which these mental images are created belies the complexity of three-dimensional body shapes. We explored the relationship between body shapes and body descriptions and showed that a small number of words can be used to generate categorically accurate representations of three-dimensional bodies. The dimensions of body-shape variation that emerged in a language-based similarity space were related to major dimensions of variation computed directly from three-dimensional laser scans of 2,094 bodies. This relationship allowed us to generate three-dimensional models of people in the shape space using only their coordinates on analogous dimensions in the language-based description space. Human descriptions of photographed bodies and their corresponding models matched closely. The natural mapping between the spaces illustrates the role of language as a concise code for body shape that captures perceptually salient global and local body features.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0956-7976
,
1467-9280
DOI:
10.1177/0956797616663878
Language:
English
Publisher:
SAGE Publications
Publication Date:
2016
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2022256-7
SSG:
5,2
