AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE RCOGNITION OF FIGURES IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN

The purpose of the present experiment is to investigate the perception of finding out the simple figure from the more complex design. The subjects of this experiment were 30 3rd-grade and 30 5th-grade children who had been, respectively, divided intp the high score group and the low score group, according to subtests of the intelligence test. The material used in the experiment consisted of 5 simple figures and 5 complex series of 4 designs esch, and in each series 2 designs contained the simple figure "overlapping" with other figures, and the other 2 designs contained the simple figure "embeded" in the complex designs. The time required for subjects to find out the simple figure from each complex design was measured by stop watch. Both analyses based on measure of the total number of errors and the total number of responses taking 2 econds of less showed that only the main effect for grade was highly significant. Further analysis based on measure of the total number of responses taking 10 seconds or less only for for the "embeded" complex designs showed that the main effect for grade and inrelligence level were both highly significant, but the interaction effect was not. Finally, the multiple regression equations were established for the 5 complex design series separately, and regression coefficients (bi's) and beta coefficients (βi's) were determined. It was found that, on the whole, the absolute values of βi's for "embeded" designs were greater than those for "overlapping" designs