The Influence of Study Time on Memory and Recognition of Structural Properties in Paintings: A Developmental Study

141 p.Thesis (Educat.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1980.The problem of the research was to examine the developmental influence of study time on memory and recognition of color and subject matter placement in paintings; and also, to examine the developmental influence of visual discrimination. In the research, study time and categories were manipulated in three grade levels.The stimuli were color slides of 16 pairs of paintings. Paintings in each pair were by the same artist and contained similar subject matter. Each pair was judged and categorized according to the similarity or dissimilarity of color and subject matter placement of the paired paintings. The paintings were sorted into four categories: similar color/similar subject matter placement (category A); dissimilar color/similar subject matter placement (category B); similar color/dissimilar subject matter placement (category C); and dissimilar color/dissimilar subject matter placement (category D). Discrimination of color and subject matter placement was assessed through the recognition of paintings in the four categories.Study time was the length of time a subject viewed a painting. Four study times were used: 100, 500, 2000, and 8000 msec. Study time was varied to affect the processing and acquisition of pictorial information. Study time was completely crossed with category, both were a with-in subject design.Two hundred and eighty-eight subjects from grade levels of 1, 5, and 9 participated in the study. Ninety-six subjects with an equal number of males and females were selected from each grade level.In the recognition tasks, the subjects viewed one painting from a pair for one of the study times. Following the study time, a five second slide blank was shown and then both paintings from a pair were shown individually: a copy of the viewed painting and a new painting. The subjects were required to determine whether each of these paintings was the same or different from the study painting. This methodology was repeated for the remaining 15 trials.Recognition was assessed by the number of correctly identified study paintings (hits) and incorrectly identified new paintings (false alarms). An initial analysis of variance was performed on the three variables of grade level, study time, and category. An analysis of variance was performed on each grade level to test the influence of study time and category. Crosstabulations for the three variables were reported.The results indicated that study time influenced the discrimination of color and subject matter placement for all grade levels. This effect decreased as age increased. Also, during the 500 msec of viewing, first graders initially focused their attention on color, then shifted their attention to subject matter placement as study time increased. Fifth and ninth graders focused their attention primarily on subject matter placement.These results support Flavell's view (1977) that perceptual sensitivity to stimulus information increases with age which allows for more accurate discrimination between similar things. Also, the influence of study time upon the recognition of structural properties supports Piaget's view (1973) that memory becomes more efficient at encoding and decoding data as age increases.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD