Schoolchildren Of Classes Research Articles

Visual Dialects: A Comparative Study of Photographs in Three Grade Schools

Abstract In an attempt to compare the visual dialects employed by upper class, lower class, and retarded youth Polaroid cameras were provided to fourth grade students under controlled situations. The 556 prints obtained were independently coded and analyzed. It was found that retarded children have little image of their peers, but rather tend to photograph machines and adults. The lower class school children tended to photograph their school or each other in groups. The upper class school children tended to photograph each other in individual, posed shots. Statistical analysis indicated these differences to be significant at consistently high levels.

Pictorial Depth Perception in Scottish and Ghanaian Children, A Critique of Some Findings with the Hudson Test

Published research employing the Hudson Test is critically examined, leading to the conclusion that differences in methods and procedures make direct comparisons of the outcome of different studies inappropriate. Some limitations of the test itself are pointed out, in particular the ignoring of chance expectations, failure to exclude the operation of response sets, and ambiguities about the scoring. Tentative generalizations emerging from previous research are summarized, and the object of the study is to verify them. A newly developed test of three-dimensional perception is described, which also consists of pictures but requires less reliance upon verbal instructions. Samples of 60 Scottish and 60 Ghanaian primary school children in classes 2, 4 and 6 were tested with both the Hudson and the new test. While results still indicated a significant cultural difference in the performance on both tests, Ghanaian children experienced much less difficulty with the new test and the gap between them and Scottish children was relatively small as compared with the Hudson Test result. It is concluded that measured ability to perceive pictorial depth is in considerable part a function of the specific method used for assessment, and that African shortcomings with regard to this ability have probably been exaggerated in the past. Un examen critique des recherches utilisant le test de Hudson fait apparaître des différences de méthode et de procédure qui rendent sujettes à caution les comparaisons directes de résultats issus de diverses études. Certaines limitations du test lui-měme sont mises en évidence : ignorance des effets possibles du hasard, impossibilité d'éviter un mode de réponse stéréotypé, ambiguïtés dans l'établissement du score. Les tentatives de généralisation émergeant des recherches antérieures font ici l'objet d'une vérification au moyen d'une nouvelle épreuve de perception tri-dimensionnelle composée également d'images mais reposant moins sur des consignes verbales. Deux échantillons d'écoliers du degré primaire — 60 Ecossais et 60 Ghanéens — répondirent au test de Hudson et au nouveau test. Les résultats indiquent toujours une différence culturelle significative dans les deux épreuves mais on observe que les enfants ghanéens éprouvent beaucoup moins de difficultés avec le nouveau test et que l'écart entre leur score et celui des Ecossais est peu important comparativement à la différence obtenue au moyen du test d'Hudson. On peut conclure que l'aptitude à percevoir la profondeur dans un matériel pictural est en grande partie fonction de la méthode spécifique utilisée pour son évaluation et que l'on a probablement exagéré les déficiences des sujets africains dans ce domaine.