Pictorial Depth Increases Body Sway

This study examines the effects of pictorial depth on postural stability. In our first experiment, two abstract paintings by Maria Elena Vieira Da Silva (1908-1992) were used. Viewing the unaltered paintings induced greater body sway in participants than the cubist transformations of the same paintings in which depth cues were neutralized. In our second experiment, a Renaissance painting by Piero Della Francesca (c.1415-1492) was used due to its powerful representation of perspective and of sense of a recessed space in the visual field. Participants fixated either the recessed or the foregrounded area of the painting. Body sway was higher in the former case. Thus, body sway can even be modulated within the same painting according to variations of local depth information.