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Abstract:
This study examined the early developmental patterns of
school-aged children's categorical and coordinate image generation
abilities. According to Kosslyn (1994), the left hemisphere is more
effective at encoding and using categorical spatial relations and
the right hemisphere is more effective at encoding and using
coordinate spatial relations. Categorical representations involve
judgments about the relative position of the components of a visual
stimulus. Coordinate representations involve computing precise
metric distances between the components of a visual stimulus. Using
a technique employed by Kosslyn (1995, Experiment 3), participants,
having previously been familiarized with the appearance of the
uppercase block letters, indicated if a probe mark located inside
of either a grid (the categorical task) or set of four corner
brackets (the coordinate task) covered an imagined uppercase
letter. The stimuli were presented to the right visual field-left
hemisphere (RVF-LH), the left visual field-right hemisphere
(LVF-RH), or centrally (CVF). Forty-eight children, ages 8 to 11,
were administered either the categorical or the coordinate task.
The results indicated that with development there was improvement
in children's accuracy for both the categorical and coordinate
tasks. In addition, consistent with Kosslyn's (1995) findings with
adults, there was an emergent pattern of LVF-RH specialization for
the coordinate task. Although there was a similar LVF-RH trend for
the categorical task it was not significant and remained stable
throughout development.
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