Children below the age of seven are very influenced by the orientation of the external frame of reference when they attempt to lay down a stimulus to match that of a tilted target. If, however, the target be set upon a baseline the children seem unable to benefit from salient parallel alignment cues. By modifying the usual design it is shown that children can remain able to take their bearings from contextual alignment even when setting a pointer upon a baseline; but the effect is only revealed in a complex three-way interaction. Contextual sensitivity is thus not abolished, but masked; and its re-emergence is in an apparently anomalous form.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BayraktarR. (1979). An Analysis of Various Copying Errors in Young Children Unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Sussex.
2.
BermanP. W. (1976). Young children's use of the frame of reference in construction of the horizontal, vertical and the oblique. Child Development47, 259–63.
3.
BermanP. W.CunninghamJ. G.HarkulichJ. (1974). Construction of the horizontal, vertical and oblique by young children: failure to find the “oblique effect”. Child Development45, 474–8.
4.
BrookeJ. B. (1976). Error Patterns in Human Judgements of Proportional Continua Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham.
5.
BrookeJ. B.MacraeA. W. (1980). Error patterns in judgment and production of horizontal and vertical scale position. Perception and Psychophysics27, 295–9.
6.
BryantP. E. (1969). Perception and memory of the orientation of visually presented lines by children. Nature224, 1331–2.
7.
BryantP. E. (1974). Perception and Understanding in Young ChildrenLondon: Methuen.
8.
CoatesS. (1974). Sex differences in field independence among pre-school children. In FriedmanR. C.RichartR. M.Vande WieleR. L. (Eds), Sex Differences in Behaviour.New York: Wiley.
9.
EckertH. M. (1970). Visual-motor tasks at 3 and 4 years of age. Perceptual and Motor skills31, 560–00.
10.
ElliottJ. M.ConnollyK. J. (1978). The effect of visual frame of reference on a judgement of plane stimulus orientation by children. Perception7, 139–49.
11.
FairweatherH. (1976). Sex differences in cognition. Cognition3, 231–80.
12.
FisherC. B. (1979). Children's memory for orientation in the absence of external cues. Child Development50, 1088–92.
13.
FisherG. H. (1969). An experimental study of angular subtension. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology12, 356–66.
14.
FisherG. H. (1974). An experimental study of linear inclination. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology18, 52–62.
15.
FreemanN. H. (1980). Strategies of Representation in Young Children: Analysis of Spatial Skills and Drawing ProcessesLondon: Academic Press.
16.
GuilfordJ. P. (1967). The Nature of Human IntelligenceNew York: McGraw-Hill.
17.
IbbotsonA.BryantP. E. (1976). The perpendicular error and the vertical effect. Perception5, 319–26.
18.
JahodaG. (1980). Sex and ethnic differences on a spatial-perception task: some hypotheses tested. British Journal of Psychology71, 425–32.
19.
MaccobyE. E.JacklinC. N. (1975). The Psychology of Sex DifferencesLondon: Oxford University Press.
20.
MacraeA. W.LohH. K. (1980). Why do constant errors occur in matched reproduction angles? Paper presented to the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society, Aberdeen.
21.
MelloneM. (1944). A factorial study of picture tests for young children. British Journal of Psychology35, 9–16.
22.
NaeliR.HarrisP. (1976). Orientation of the diamond and the square. Perception5, 73–8.
23.
ShermanJ. A. (1967). Problems of sex differences in space perception and aspects of intellectual functioning. Psychological Review74, 290–9.
