Meet the member


Retired member TN Davies MSc CEng MIMechE MIED MRAeS gives an account of his research work into possible cross-cultural differences in visual perception.


The announcement in Engineering Designer (Sept/Oct 2011), advising members of the deadline for applications for the 2012 Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travelling Fellowship Scheme, enabling individuals to travel overseas to carry out projects relating to their interest or profession, prompted me to offer a brief account of my own research involving young people in the UK and similar youngsters in Swaziland.


The work, which began as a result of interest and encouragement from the IED and its members, was an attempt to gain some understanding of possible cross-cultural differences in visual perception and the impact on the teaching of multi-cultural groups.


In the 1970s, the IED had just moved to Courtleigh under the leadership of the late Peter Booker and at that time I was responsible for teaching engineering drawing/ design and engineering dynamics at the RAF College, Cranwell.


In addition to the CNAA engineering degree programme, groups of multinational engineering cadets and officers from several African countries, the Middle East and Far East were accepted into the college on


a series of short education and training courses.


It was soon quite apparent that selection for many, if not all, had been based solely on their level of mathematical ability, which I suspected had been achieved by rote learning. As a consequence, I was struggling to impart the skill of three-dimensional spatial perception of two-dimensional technical illustrations where obviously no two exercises were exactly the same and for most of the students their pictorial culture was historically two-dimensional.


Pictorial representation of engineering components, of even simple but differing shapes, demands fresh spatial perception of each object depicted by line drawings. There is no opportunity for rote learning.


To make matters worse, students from the Far East in each group had little or no problem with spatial perception and also demonstrated high quality drafting skills.


I was faced with a double challenge. How could I create exercises that would help develop spatial perception of technical illustrations? Plus, I wanted to know more


about cross-cultural differences in visual perception. My response to these challenges was reported in Engineering Designer.


At that time, military aircraft were coming into service with various cockpit visual displays – head-up displays, moving map displays and even (in the USA) the development of helmet visor displays providing visual information.


I subsequently gained a Defence Fellowship, based at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, with the intention of undertaking a review of the published research relating to pilots’ visual perception of such information. This, I hoped, would help me understand the visual and spatial perception of two-dimensional line figures representing three-dimensional situations.


How wrong could I be? Advances in avionic display technology were offering a ‘Christmas tree’ array of cockpit windscreen displays without any apparent corresponding physiological or psychological research on pilots’ ability to visually accommodate and process this information whilst flying operational missions. Pilots were returning from sorties complaining of headaches.


I was struggling to impart the skill of three-dimensional spatial perception of two- dimensional technical illustrations.


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