Perception Of Spatial Relations Research Articles

Development of Spatial Abilities of Preadolescents: What Works?

Creation in space and perception of spatial relations are important workplace skills that can be successfully developed in public education through the cooperation of art education, mathematics, and technology, the STEAM model that has been successfully employed in higher education. In a longitudinal school-based experiment, we enhanced the spatial skills of preadolescents through a STEAM-based educational programme. To design our methods of intervention in mathematics, visual arts, and information technology, we used the structure of spatial skills identified in previous studies. Developmental methods involved two- and three-dimensional visualisation tasks in real-life and virtual learning environments. We employed a pre- and post-hoc assessment design using a spatial ability task sequence standardised in Hungary that proved to be valid for assessing Slovak students as well. Authentic assessment tasks included real-life situations when visualisations of spatial relations were used for orientation and creation. Pre-test results showed significant differences between school classes: we identified high achievers and middle-to-low achievers. Our developmental programme was aimed at personalised talent development in the high-achieving classes and the general improvement of the performance of low achievers, raising insufficient pre-test results to an average post-test performance.

Percepcja wzrokowa uczniów z lekką niepełnosprawnością intelektualną

Introduction: Visual perception is an important cognitive ability, which influences other skills, including the mastery of school techniques by students with mild intellectual disabilities. An important goal of supporting of childhood education is to develop visual perception in all its aspects. Developing aspects such as hand-eye coordination, perception of figures and background, perception stability, spatial position and perception of spatial relationships has a positive effect on the math skills and writing and reading of early schoolchildren. Research Aim : The aim of the research was to learn about the functioning of students with mild intellectual disability in terms of 5 aspects of visual perception: visual and motor coordination, perception of the figure and background, perception of the constancy of shape, figure position and spatial relations, and to develop practical implications for developing this function. Method: The research used the method of diagnostic survey. The observation technique and the tool of M. Frostig and D. Horne “Visual Perception Test” were used to collect the data. Results: The level of functioning of the examined students with mild intellectual disability in terms of visual perception is below the norm. In all the subjects, a decrease in the level of visual perception was found in 3 of the examined areas; perception of the figure and background, shape and position of the figure. In terms of eye-hand coordination and the perception of spatial relations, the dominant students are those with the tested feature below their age norm. Conclusions : On the basis of the obtained results, guidelines for working with students were formulated in order to improve their functioning in the field of visual perception in all examined aspects.

Prepositions and Spatial Relations in Natural Languages According to Leibniz

In his 1677 Dialogue, Leibniz answers the question of how it is possible that speakers of different languages agree on the same truths by postulating “a certain correspondence between characters and things”. In the mid-1680s, he arguably attempts to specify this “correspondence” by explaining how linguistic particles are connected to our perception of spatial relations among things in the world. Firstly, this paper focuses on the role that, according to Leibniz, signs and characters play in our knowledge. Secondly, it introduces the solution that can be found in the Dialogue to the problem of how the same truth can be expressed in different languages. After briefly expounding Leibniz’s theory of natural languages, the paper gives an account of Leibniz’s analysis of the nature of prepositions and of how they contribute, in a natural language, to determine the correspondence between characters and things that is mentioned in the Dialogue.

Percepção das relações espaciais em crianças da educação pré-escolar

This paper focuses on young children’s perception of spatial relations. It analyses spatial relations of kindergarten children (3-5-years-old, N=15), addressing two questions: How do children perform when solving perception of spatial relationships problems? What strategies do children use when solving these problems? Qualitative methods were used to describe children’s reactions when solving problems of: recognizing position from 2D to 3D, recognizing parts of the whole, recognizing the position of the objects. Results suggests that recognizing position from 2D to 3D seems to be the most difficult problems. Even 3-years-old used successful strategies in solving the perception of spatial relations problems. Thus these problems can be explored in kindergarten, as a way to stimulate visualization skills.

The Problem of Spatiality for a Relational View of Experience

It’s often said that relational view of experience can’t provide an explanation of mode of presentation phenomena: the idea is that if experience is characterized merely as a relation to an object, then we can’t make sense of the idea that one and the same object can be given in perception in many different ways. I show that we can address this problem by looking at the causal structure in relational experience. Experience of an object is caused by experience of particular properties it has, such as its color and location, and experience of the object is in turn a cause of experience of its properties as characteristics of that object. We can explain mode of presentation phenomena as a matter of there being different sets of properties that can cause perception of one and the same object. I discuss how experiments in vision science and computational models of vision can underwrite this way of finding the causal structure in experience, relationally conceived. I look at an alternative, internalist approach to mode of presentation phenomena, in terms of ‘mental paint’, and suggest that the internalist approach is simply incoherent. Finally, I point out that we have mode of presentation phenomena for the spatial aspects of vision, such as perception of spatial relations and spatial location, but that these phenomena resist analysis in any of the terms proposed so far.

Mental representation of compositions in paintings is based on their perceptual similarities

Recent studies have found that art works and human vision share some basic characteristics, such as statistical regularities (Graham & Field, 2007), motion (Kim & Blake, 2007), and lightness perception (Cavanagh, 2005). Perception of spatial relations is another important visual ability that artists have long been employed in their art works as composition. We investigated whether people utilize compositional information when they see paintings and if compositions are, indeed, mentally represented. In order to see whether people make use of the compositional information, Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that paintings with similar compositions would interfere with target detection in a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. The stimuli were 495 Renaissance paintings classified in advance into 6 different compositions based on experts' ratings. We found that target detection performance significantly decreased when the composition of the target image was consistent with the distracters compared to when they were inconsistent, suggesting the interference by the similar compositional information. Experiment 2 was conducted to examine whether paintings were mentally represented according to their compositions. If the interference effects found in Experiment 1 were due to representation of compositions, paintings with perceptually similar compositions should be closely placed in mental space. Participants learned to associate arbitrary numbers assigned to 30 paintings. The frequency of errors was measured to construct confusion matrices, which were then analyzed through multidimensional scaling. As expected, the paintings with the same composition were grouped together with significantly shorter psychological distances in a two-dimensional space. These results suggest that compositions in paintings are utilized and represented according to their perceived similarities. Our research supports the view that artists’ creation of visual works is based on their active exploration of how we see the world, and provides a possible link between human vision and aesthetic preference.

Perception of spatial relations between objects in early ontogeny

Development of the perception of spatial relations between objects was studied in infants aged from 3 to 4 to 24 to 25 months. The following tests were performed: prediction of the results of rectilinear and nonrectilinear toy motion; search for the toy hidden before the baby’s eyes under a cup, under one of two to five similar cups, and under a cup different from the others (a “local mark”), which was stationary or moving in the visual field; and search for a toy hidden under the “local mark” while distracting the baby's attention. It was shown that a child masters the regularities of spatial motion of an object first (at the age of 4 to 5 to 8 to 9 months). To the age of 10 to 11 months, all the children remember the location of a hidden toy using the egocentric location strategy (“Self” and “Object”). This strategy gradually improves and allows a child to ignore indifferent objects in the visual field. The ability to use a “local mark,” as a direct indicator of a hidden toy location, appears and is strengthened beginning from 14 to 15 months of age. This fact testifies to the transition from the egocentric strategy of object location to assessment of the relative location of two objects in the visual field. A capability for estimating the relative spatial position of three and more objects develops beginning from the age of two years.

Location and line orientation as distinguishable primitives in spatial vision.

In geometry the same parameters define a straight line segment as its two endpoints, yet the human observer's perception of spatial relations can differ depending whether an actual line is shown or merely its terminators. Experiments are reported that demonstrate that the position and orientation senses can be largely decoupled. Because both point localization and line orientation each in its own way has a quality of immediacy, yet manifests high performance in the hyperacuity range, both must be regarded as a primitive each with its own neural processing mechanisms. This can give rise to perceptual dissonances (visual illusions) of which one example is analysed.

Ambiguity in perception and experimentation.

Previously we (Bruno & Cutting, 1988) explored the perception of spatial relations among objects laid out in a computer-generated environment. In his commentary on our article, Massaro (1988) raised several issues. The most important is from his reanalysis, which indicated that--because of a subadditive trend in the results--additive and multiplicative strategies fit our data in Experiment 1 about equally well. In reply, we performed a different analysis. Results corroborate subadditivity--and hence multiplicative information combination--in Experiment 1 but provide no evidence for it in Experiments 2 and 3. On the whole, then, the results still support additivity more strongly than any other combination rule and thus support our notion of minimodularity.

Curve tracing: a possible basic operation in the perception of spatial relations.

The two experiments in this study suggest that fast internal tracing of curves is employed by the visual system in the perception of certain shape properties and spatial relations. The experimental task in the first experiment was to determine, as rapidly as possible, whether two Xs lay on the same curve or on different curves in a visual display. Mean response time for “same” responses increased monotonically with increasing distance along the curve between the Xs. The task in the second experiment was to decide either that a curve joining two Xs was unbroken or that the curve had a gap. Decision times again increased as the length of the curve joining the Xs was increased. The results of both experiments suggest that people can trace curves in a visual display internally at high speed (the average rate of tracing was about 40° of visual angle per second). Curve tracing may be an important visual process used to integrate information from different parts of a visual display.

Autonomic Responses During Intellectual Activity in Four- to Seven-Year-Old Children

Arithmetic is one of the complex forms of human intellectual activity. This kind of intellectual operation is usually studied by psychologists. It has been found that the learning of arithmetic by children is closely related to the development of speech, the perception of spatial relations, and the maturation of higher forms of analytic-synthetic activity by the cerebral cortex. The development of the intellectual operations of arithmetic goes through several stages from visual-operational forms to abstract forms [9-11].

SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF VISUAL PERCEPTION FOLLOWING INJURY TO THE BRAIN

IN THE case reported in the preceding section, a persistent and systematic alteration in visual space perception was described in a case in which (consequent to a shrapnel injury of the posterior portion of the right parietal lobe) hemiparesis had developed but practically normal fields of vision were observed on standard perimetric examination. In the following case, an almost identical disorder in the perception of spatial relations was observed in a patient with shrapnel injuries of the occipital lobe. In contrast to the first case, the injury resulted in demonstrable homonymous field defects, but was not accompanied with any further changes in sensory or motor function. Case 2. —J. H. M., a radio man, third class, aged 20, was injured on Dec. 13, 1944 in the Philippine area, when a Japanese suicide plane hit his ship and exploded. He sustained multiple shrapnel wounds and lacerations of the head and body.

SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF VISUAL PERCEPTION FOLLOWING INJURY TO THE BRAIN

IN THE case reported in the preceding section, a persistent and systematic alteration in visual space perception was described in a case in which (consequent to a shrapnel injury of the posterior portion of the right parietal lobe) hemiparesis had developed but practically normal fields of vision were observed on standard perimetric examination. In the following case, an almost identical disorder in the perception of spatial relations was observed in a patient with shrapnel injuries of the occipital lobe. In contrast to the first case, the injury resulted in demonstrable homonymous field defects, but was not accompanied with any further changes in sensory or motor function. Case 2. —J. H. M., a radio man, third class, aged 20, was injured on Dec. 13, 1944 in the Philippine area, when a Japanese suicide plane hit his ship and exploded. He sustained multiple shrapnel wounds and lacerations of the head and body.

The perception of spatial relations by the rat: A type of response not easily explained by conditioning.

The perception of spatial relations by the rat: A type of response not easily explained by conditioning.