ABSTRACT
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BODY MORPHOLOGY AND THE VISUO-SPATIAL-TEMPORAL
SKILLS
BY
ELLERY LANIER
Doctor of Philosophy, Interdisciplinary Program
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico, 1997
Dr. Victor S. Johnston, Chair
It is proposed that the EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptedness) conferred on Homo sapiens an important functional relationship between body morphology and the ability to compute the movement of objects through space and time. This ability was measured using a hypercard program that simulated the parabolic trajectory of a missile on a computer display. Both the velocity of the missile and duration of its visible trajectory were varied from trial to trial. Subjects with different morphology refers to somatotype, based on the classification first proposed by W.H. Sheldon, and measured using the tables developed by S.S. Stevens. Two hypothesis were proposed and evaluated. Hypothesis 1. Male subjects would score higher than female subjects on the visuo-spatial-temporal task. Hypothesis 2. Mesomorphy would be highly correlated with accuracy, in both male and female subjects. Male subjects scored significantly higher than most females. Highly mesomorphic women also had high scores.
The results are interpreted as support for the evolutionary origins of human abilities.
The research on body morphology and behavior conducted for this paper (using the SAS statistical program JMP) found correlations remarkably close to Sheldon and Stevens. This could be due to experiments bias shaping results. But the figures are compelling.
TABLE 4 |
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| Sheldon | Lanier | |
| Endomorphy to Visceratonia | 0.79 | 0.86 |
| Mesomorphy to Somatotonia | 0.82 | 0.67 |
| Ectomorphy to Cerebratonia | 0.83 | 0.77 |
The Sheldon correlation's are for 1940 while the Lanier correlation's are for 1995.
Claims have been made that Sheldon ignored the influence of nurture (specifically social learning) on behavior. Actually his research included lengthy and detailed reports of family and cultural backgrounds of each subject.
David Lester studied infant before societal influences could work on them. At a hospital in New Jersey, neonates were somatotyped by nurses using the Parnell tables. The report is to the point. Using his M scales, Parnell extended Sheldon's method to all ages (Parnell, 1970). The results were then correlated with the scores on the Apgar test. The researcher concluded, "The existence of some associations between physique and personality in neonates in consistent with Sheldon's theory. (Lester, 1990)
Sheldon's method of photographic analysis had been used by this author in research done with Dr. Conrad Milne in the Physical Ed. Dept. at New Mexico State. One hundred competitive swimmers were analyzed. A more effective method of somatotyping that was not as time consuming as Sheldon's seventeen measures, was found by using the tables developed by S.S. Stevens. The tables had been sent to this writer by Sheldon in the early 1970's. The tables were found practical for the specific objectives sought in the current experiment. They cannot be used during pregnancy or gross pathology. Using an interpolation procedure it was found that the need for body photos and expensive planimetric analysis was eliminated. To test the validity of the interpolation method the means of the current research were compared with the means of a similar study done in 1966. The earlier study used the full 17 body diameter caliper measures developed by Sheldon.
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