Figural factors and the development of pictorial inferences.

The role of figural characteristics in the development of pictorial inferences was examined. Two versions of 10 three-picture story sequences were presented to kindergarten and third-grade children. One version maximized while the other minimized figural similarity among pictures. After viewing the sequences, the children were asked to discriminate old study pictures and inferentially consistent new pictures from distractors. While the kindergarteners identified significantly fewer inference pictures than the third graders in all conditions, there was less difference between the grades in the figurally similar conditions. Overall, the kindergarteners identified the fewest inference pictures in the presence of distractors that figurally matched the study pictures. These results indicate that although the pictorial inferences drawn by kindergarteners are heavily influenced by figural representations, such figural dependency cannot account for all of the observed developmental differences.

The development of children's mental tracking strategies on a rotation task.

In two experiments, 5- to 13-year-old children were required to mentally track the rotation of a pointer around a circular backdrop, and to indicate the pointer's imagined position on the backdrop at the sound of a signal. In Experiment 1, children imagined the pointer rotate around its end point. In Experiment 2, children imagined the pointer rotate around its midpoint, and indicated the position of one of its two ends at the time of the signal. The end to be indicated was not specified by the experimenter until the time of the signal. Thus, children were required to use an imaging strategy that could keep track of the changing positions of both ends of the pointer. In both experiments, children older than 8 years of age generated linear distance X time functions indicating mental tracking, but younger children did not. In Experiment 2, the proportions of children at each grade level using holistic or part-to-part strategies to mentally track the pointer were comparable, as were mental tracking rates. The results were discussed in relation to both recent research on children's counting, and Piagetian and information-processing views of mental imagery development.

The structure of imagery.

Children's drawings of objects about to be moved in space (anticipatory images) were studied in relation to their judgments about Euclidean spatial relations. Tasks assessing Euclidean geometric operations were administered to 102 girsl between the ages of 4 and 13 years. 5 operative levels resulted: (a) failure on all operations tasks, (b) success on conservation of length, (c) success on conservation and 1-dimensional measurement, (d) success on the latter 2 tasks plus measurement in 2 dimensions, and (e) success on the latter 3 tasks and coordination of internal and external reference frames. The same children performed on 6 imaginal tasks involving movements of objects. Results confirmed several theoretical expectations: (a) children who were unable to measure had difficulty imaging successive positions for 1-dimensional movement; (b) children who were unable to coordinate a point in space by reference to 2 axes were unable to draw states of movement correctly for 2-dimensional movement; (c) children's errors in drawing successive positions of moving objects were related to the structure of operations at the lower levels; and (d) the coordination of object positions over successive states was dependent on the ability to measure from an external frame. The results were interpreted as support for Piaget and Inhelder's theory of imagery development.