Copying Strategies for Patterns by Children and Adults

Abstract

In the present study, eve movements during the copying of a pattern were analyzed to compare visual strategies of adults and children. Subjects had to build an accurate copy of spatial block patterns. Tested variables were the incidence and the duration of ocular dwelling in the pattern area (where the pattern to be copied was located), the work area (where the copy was made), and the source area (where the blocks were that could be used for creating the copy). Furthermore, to unravel employed strategies, sequences of dwelled areas were investigated. Previous studies reported that adults employ repetitive visual scanning strategies to accomplish the task instead of strategies depending upon an internal representation. The present results show that the II children, within the ages of 7 to 12 years, made more eye movements and fixations of longer duration during copy tasks than the 11 adults. The visual strategies of the children were highly comparable to those of adults. Memory was restricted to one block, while color and location seemed to be remembered together.

Toward a more embedded/extended perspective on the cognitive function of gestures

“…The embedded/extended perspective has given rise to a large amount of empirical research on the way the cognitive system uses the body and the environment (e.g., Kirsh and Maglio, 1994; Ballard et al, 1995; Haselen et al, 2000; Martin and Schwartz, 2005; Fu, 2011; Risko et al, 2013; see also Pouw et al, 2014). A seminal study by Kirsh and Maglio (1994; see also Stull et al, 2012) found that expert Tetris players make more use of epistemic actions ; actions that uncover (hidden) information that is cognitively demanding to compute.…”

“…Another classic study (Ballard et al, 1995, 1997; Haselen et al, 2000) showed that the cognitive system opts for retrieving information just-in-time, thereby minimizing constrains on working-memory. Participants were asked to recreate a configuration of colored blocks from a model by picking up colored blocks from a resource space and putting them in a work-space .…”

Practice modulates motor‐related beta oscillations differently in adolescents and adults

“…A large body of literature has established that there are cognitive processing differences in adolescents (Chuah & Maybery, ; Haselen et al . ; Yuzawa, ; Czernochowski et al . ; Ferguson & Bowey, ; Mäntylä et al .…”

“…A large body of literature has established that there are cognitive processing differences in adolescents (Chuah & Maybery, 1999;Haselen et al 2000;Yuzawa, 2001;Czernochowski et al 2005;Ferguson & Bowey, 2005;Mäntylä et al 2007), and potentially immature cognitive processing contributes to the motor performance differences. It has been hypothesized that these motor performance differences may simply arise from inexperience with the task and may improve with practice (Goble et al 2005;Contreras-Vidal et al 2005;Contreras-Vidal, 2006;King et al 2009King et al , 2012Pangelinan et al 2011Pangelinan et al , 2013.…”

What do Scanpaths Tell Us About Cognitive Processes? An Investigation in a Problem Solving Domain

“…Copying is a strategy that should be reflected in eye tracking data, albeit to date this has been shown in domains outside of problem solving. Studies investigating eye movements involved in copying of material from a source to the target indicate that regular shifts of attention occur between the source and target (Ballard, Hayhoe, and Pelz, 1995;Bulling et al, 2010;Bosse et al, 2014;Haselen, Van Der Steen, and Frens, 2000). According to a seminal study by Ballard, Hayhoe, and Pelz (1995), copying from a model (i.e., example) to the reconstruction (i.e., problem) area requires the storage of too much information in working memory to reproduce the entire model with one glance.…”