The paper focuses on the analysis of perception of virtual objects (objects of the virtual environment displayed on the screens of touch screen devices) in children of early and preschool age engaged in actions with these objects. The first part of the article reviews the psychological outcomes of a child mastering how to operate a touch screen device as a tool from the standpoint of D.B. Elkonin’s theory of child development and P.Ya. Galperin’s concept of the functional differences between a tool and a means. In the second part of the article we analyze the perceptual experience obtained by children of early and preschool age when using touchscreen devices. As we see it, the main distinguishing feature of perception of virtual objects is the discrepancy between the information received through the visual and haptic channels. We analyze the results of experimental studies that reveal the impact of this phenomenon on the process of perception of virtual objects and the extent to which the representations of virtual and real objects differ: 1) the ability of children to process haptic information, as well as to implement intermodal transfer, improves at the age of 5 to 7 years; 2) in situations of a significant discrepancy in information from different senses, children under 6 do not perform multisensory integration, but rely on one sense (usually vision). In our pilot study (17 children aged 4—5 years), a significant increase in the time of haptic recognition of a virtual object as compared to a visually perceived one (Temp = 28 at p ≤ 0.05) was detected. This can be taken as an argument in favor of the fact that children move beyond the limits of processing only visual information in situations of visual-haptic discrepancy.
The success of cross-cultural online communication in an academic environment is defined by the degree of student involvement in such an interaction. The authors' experience testifies that a number of objective, language, and psychological factors may decrease the activeness of these interactions, and as a result learning may not be effective for students in these types of cross-cultural interactions. Among such factors the current article investigates the influence of a communicator's speech peculiarities on a recipient's willingness to maintain interaction in native-to-nonnative, written online communication in the English language. The study was aimed at verifying a hypothesis about the influence of Russian communicants' speech characteristics on American communicants' willingness to maintain conversations. The research method chosen was content analysis. Thematic chats involving Russian and American students participating in the Global Understanding course were analyzed. The results of the content analysis allowed us to distinguish certain Russian communicants' written speech characteristics, such as the prevalence of language and grammar mistakes, the degree of vocabulary richness, and the use of complex sentences. Significant correlations were discovered between the American communicants' willingness to maintain conversations and the number of mistakes, indicators of lexical richness and scarcity in Russian communicants' utterances. Language and speech mistakes as well as the quantity of words in the utterances of micro themes had the highest number of significant correlations with indicators of the willingness to maintain conversations. The first factor, language and speech mistakes, decreased the willingness to maintain conversations, whereas the second factor, the number of words in Russian students' utterances, increased such willingness.
The study of children’s perception of computer models of objects (virtual objects), as different from objects of the physical world in their characteristics, is a urgent problem, but poorly researched. The goal of research is to develop a psychological model of the process of perception and recognition by preschoolers of a virtual 3D object when performing actions with it on the iPad screen. The developed model is empirically verified and makes it possible to explain the results obtained in the experiment to study the differences in the recognition of a virtual 3D object and its real prototype after perception under conditions of unimodal (visual, haptic) and bimodal (visual-haptic) perception. The experiment involved 115 preschool children (4—6 years old), divided into 5 randomized groups. It was found that during haptic recognition of a previously presented virtual object, children significantly more often chose a distractor figure that had the same dimension as the original object, but differed from it in the absence of shape details (φ * emp = 1.697, p <0.05). These results are explained by the specifics of the nature of interaction with virtual objects on the iPad screen (impact on the object without direct contact with it), as well as the discrepancy between expectations based on the experience of interacting with real objects.
Introduction. The article focuses on the mental development of children of early and preschool age in a situation where they simultaneously perceive both the real and the virtual worlds. Specifically, the article deals with the perception of the shape and weight of a virtual object in conditions of visual/tactile inconsistency. Materials and methods. The article presents the results of a series of empirical studies of the cognitive activity of preschool children when they perceive three-dimensional objects modeled by means of information devices with a touch screen. We used customized experimental procedures and a computer application which records the kinematics of a virtual object moving on the iPad screen. The novelty of our empirical study lies in the use of the analytical approach to research the role of vision and tactile perception. Research results. The obtained empirical data shows that preschoolers perceive computer models of threedimensional objects on the screen as three-dimensional, despite the discrepancy between visual and haptic information about these objects received when performing actions with them on a two-dimensional screen surface. In the event preschoolers do not have the opportunity to perform actions with the image of a threedimensional object on the screen of a tablet computer, they significantly more often perceive the object as two-dimensional. Conclusion. These results are consistent with foreign studies of perception in conditions of multisensory conflict-the foreign authors conclude that the brain tends to integrate visual and tactile information and gives more weight to the information which is more reliable. The result of perception is determined not so much by the actual sensory information but by the assessment of probability of the object having a particular feature, taking into account the existing associations.
Modern education is undergoing a process of digital transformation at all levels, including preschool. The psychologically founded use of digital technologies makes it relevant to study the child’s ideas about the objects of the digital environment (virtual objects). This empirical study is aimed to test two hypotheses: 1) Preschoolers attribute the quality of weight to virtual objects; 2) Preschoolers perceive virtual objects as light-weighted. 53 children, 3.5 to 5 years old, participated in this study (M=4.3; SD=0.41). The study includes experimental technique (H. Kloos, E.L. Amazeen), assessed children’s perception of weight based on their interaction with these objects without verbal self-report. The weight was operationalized through the location on a hill model (slope length — 40 cm) of two real objects (lightweight — 27 g, heavy — 170 g) and a virtual object, which was previously “lifted on the shelf” on a tablet PC screen. 92.5% of participants designated a specific place on the hill for the virtual object, suggesting they attributed weight to it. For 70.4% of children, the placement of a virtual object (Ме=40 см) does not significantly differ (Temp=13.5 р=0.933) from the placement of a light real object (Ме=40см). For 18.2% of children, the placement of a virtual object (Ме=14.5см) does not significantly differ (Temp=11.5 р=0.673) from the placement of a heavy real object (Ме=12.25см). Further research is necessary to better understand factors contributing to preschoolers’ perception of virtual objects wight.
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