An illusion of parallelism as discovered by Smith and Smith (1962) with adults was replicated with nine age groups of children, 6 through 14 yr. inclusive. The results demonstrate: (a) large errors of aiming at targets displaced from the line of regard, which diminish systematically with age; (b) an increase in the effect of the illusion with increasing age; (c) a drastic reduction of developmental effects of the illusion with a change in 5's location of observation; and (d) the comparability of the correlation matrix for children to that of adults. The effects of age were hypothesized to be due to changes in the developmental age for the aptitude of spatial visualization.
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References
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