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TOPOLOGICAL AND EUCLIDEAN SPATIAL FEATURES NOTED BY CHILDREN
Author(s) -
Jahoda Gustav,
Deregowski Jan B.,
Sinha Durganand
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1080/00207597408247101
Subject(s) - categorization , humanities , psychology , euclidean geometry , perception , social psychology , ethnology , sociology , geography , mathematics , art , artificial intelligence , computer science , geometry , neuroscience
The question explored in this study is whether the spatial‐perceptual difficulties experienced in some cultures could be partly accounted for in terms of a persistence of predominantly topological functioning. An oddity‐choice task was devised consisting of one set of regular and another of irregular figures such that responses could be classified as topological (T), Euclidean (E) or “unrelated” (U), the last indicating failure to categorize figures consistently. A total of 415 children aged 4–12 were tested in Hong Kong, India, Scotland and Zambia. Few significant age trends but highly significant cultural and sub‐cultural differences were found. Contrary to expectation, T responses were roughly constant while the proportion of both E and U responses showed systematic cross‐cultural variations. There was evidence that it is U responses rather than the proportion of E responses which directly reflect spatial ability. The factors producing cultural and sub‐cultural differences are discussed.