Abstract
Three studies are reported with children aged 
to 
years and also with educationally subnormal children, in which it was found that up to about 7 years children's selection of one of a pair of line stimuli as ‘falling over’ is affected by the nature of the visual surround contours provided. Both the form of the stimulus surround and the presence or absence of a baseline tilted 45° relative to the horizontal were found to affect the children's judgements. The plane (horizontal or vertical) in which the stimuli were presented had no effect on the results.
It is argued that while the results show the influence of the visual surround on children's comprehension of ‘falling over’, this may not be wholly explicable in terms of surround contour matching, as conventionally correct judgements were obtained in the absence of all straight line contours in the immediate surround.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.