The influence of pareidolia has often been anecdotally observed in examples of Upper Palaeolithic cave art, where topographic features of cave walls were incorporated into images. As part of a wider investigation into the visual psychology of the earliest known art, we explored three hypotheses relating to pareidolia in cases of Late Upper Palaeolithic art in Las Monedas and La Pasiega Caves (Cantabria, Spain). Deploying current research methods from visual psychology, our results support the notion that topography of cave walls played a strong role in the placement of figurative images—indicative of pareidolia influencing art making—although played a lesser role in determining whether the resulting images were relatively simple or complex. Our results also suggested that lighting conditions played little or no role in determining the form or placement of images, contrary to what has been previously assumed. We hypothesize that three ways of artist–cave interaction (‘conversations’) were at work in our sample caves and suggest a developmental scheme for these. We propose that these ‘conversations’ with caves and their surfaces may have broader implications for how we conceive of the emergence and development of art in the Palaeolithic.

在旧石器时代晚期洞穴艺术的例子中，经常可以观察到幻想性幻想的影响，其中洞穴墙壁的地形特征被纳入图像中。作为对最早已知艺术的视觉心理学进行更广泛调查的一部分，我们在拉斯莫内达斯和拉帕西加洞穴（西班牙坎塔布里亚）的旧石器时代晚期艺术案例中探讨了与幻想性幻想相关的三个假设。采用当前视觉心理学的研究方法，我们的结果支持这样的观点，即洞穴墙壁的地形在比喻图像的放置中发挥了重要作用（表明幻想性幻想影响艺术创作），尽管在确定最终图像是否相对简单方面发挥了较小的作用或复杂。我们的结果还表明，照明条件在决定图像的形式或位置方面几乎没有发挥任何作用，这与之前的假设相反。我们假设艺术家与洞穴互动（“对话”）的三种方式在我们的样本洞穴中发挥作用，并提出了这些的发展方案。我们认为，这些与洞穴及其表面的“对话”可能对我们如何看待旧石器时代艺术的出现和发展产生更广泛的影响。