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Biomedical subjects

E Mullet

Publications and source records attributed to E Mullet.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

The height + width = area of a rectangle rule in five-year-olds: effects of stimulus distribution and graduation of the response scale.

This study attempts to account for disparities between the Anderson and Cuneo (1978), Leon (1982), and Lautrey, Mullet, and Paques (1989) studies in regard to children's area judgment. Two task variables were manipulated: stimulus distribution (biased/unbiased) and the type of response scale (graduated/ungraduated). Three age groups (5, 6, and 7 year olds) were tested. The mean integration pattern for 5-year-olds presented a negatively biased stimulus distribution, and an ungraduated response scale was highly convergent and suggested the use of a centration rule (replication of the Lautrey et al. results). When 5-year-olds were presented with an unbiased stimulus distribution and a graduated scale, the integration pattern was only slightly convergent (as in Leon). The effects of two factors (age and graduation) were significant and combined additively: The older the child, the more graduated the response scale and the more the integration pattern tended to form three ascending parallel lines (the Anderson & Cuneo results).

Child Development

Judgments of quantity and conservation of quantity: the area of a rectangle.

This study examines the relationships between perceptive judgment of quantity and conservation judgment of quantity with regard to the concept of area. Twenty children who passed an area conservation task (mean age = 8) and 20 children who failed it (mean age = 6, 7) were administered an area judgment task. This task was a replication of Anderson and Cuneo's study (1978, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 107, 335-378). The conserving children generally appeared to apply an additive rule (the height and width rule) observed by Anderson and Cuneo in 5 year olds. The nonconserving children in contrast generally presented patterns suggesting centration on one of the two dimensions. The implications for Anderson's and Piaget's conceptions of conservation development are discussed.

Age Factors

Information integration in an area judgment task: effect of aids on children's perceptual judgments.

This study was designed to examine the cognitive processes involved in perceptual judgments of area with the methodology and concepts of Anderson's (1981) information integration theory. The Area = Height + Width rule, which Anderson and Cuneo (1978) showed to be operant in children's judgments, can in fact cover two different processes. Children may make a height judgment and then a length judgment and apply an additive integration operation to both. Alternatively, children may base themselves on the figure outline and estimate total length directly as a function of the distance scanned. Similarly, the multiplicatory integration pattern can result either from applying a multiplicatory operation to separate estimates or from visual exploration of the area bounded by the figure. In the present experiment, the characteristics of the areas of the test figures were modified (perimeter marking, rows of Xs covering the area, etc.) to elicit additive or multiplicatory integration patterns as a function of condition. The findings demonstrate that the second interpretation of both rules is more likely.

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