Length judgments of body parts

Independent groups of subjects judged the size of four body-parts and four nonbody stimuli under two size-instruction conditions. The shapes of the nonbody stimuli approximated the shapes of the body-parts. For both apparent and objective size instructions, the pattern of errors of body-part judgments confirmed the findings of Shontz (1969); judgmental errors of head-width and forearm-length were significantly greater than judgmental errors of hand-length and foot-length. Although not significant statistically, a similar pattern of errors was obtained for nonbody size judgments.