Effect of body recognition on judgments of length of component parts

Two groups of subjects judged the lengths of component parts of either an abstract representation of the human body form or a control figure lacking any body-like resemblance. Although subjects recognized the abstract figure as a human body the pattern of errors in judgments of length of the component parts failed to replicate the well established error pattern obtained in judgments of length of actual human body-parts. The results are discussed with respect to the hypothesis that recognition of a stimulus as human body is the critical determinant of the pattern of errors in judgments of lengths of body-parts.