Visual Arts Students vs Science Students

[Cameron]

I may be dreaming, but I seem to remember reading (some time ago now) about a college (maybe community college) where the students received a course in Fingerprint Identification/Forensic Science, and there was a difference in the time that some students took to complete the Fingerprint identification exercises. When it was discussed with the students, it found that some were arts (visual arts???) students and the others were science students. From memory, it was the visual arts students that were better at Fingerprint Identification that science students.

Is there ANY body out there that knows of the article. I think it was in Journal of Forensic Identification, I just can't remember.

Reason that I ask is somebody at my work is looking for that article and I cannot find it.

Any help will be appreciated.

[Pat]

You may be referring to my comments titled "The Ability Equation," published in the JFI in March, 1996.

Cheers,
Pat

[g.]

Cameron,

Check out my thesis, chapter 5. We have data that demonstrated Pat's effect for a specific task. All other tasks we gave "artistic participants" v "non-artistic participants" showed no effect.

http://www.unil.ch/esc/page18345.html

good luck

g.

[Cameron]

Thanks for that. It will assist greatly. One of my staff wanted to continue along this line of study.