Children’s orientation judgments: Retinally or environmentally determined?

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Children between the ages of 3 and 9 years judged the uprightness of pictures of realistic figures under three conditions: tilt of the visual surround, tilt of the subject, and tilt of both subject and surround in the same direction. The tilts used were 0, 90, and 180 deg. Judgments were not affected by tilt of the visual surround alone. With 90-deg head tilt, subjects of all ages made judgments in terms of gravitational cues. With 180-deg tilt, the youngest children made judgments based on retinal cues, whereas the older children used gravitational cues more often. The discussion made two main proposals: that uprightness judgments could be based on different cues under 90- and 180-deg head tilts, and that the age differences were due to a change in the nature of the judgments being made rather than to a change in the framework used.