Blind and sighted children's reasoning in transformational geometry: Modality specific and non-specific influences.
Item
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Title
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Blind and sighted children's reasoning in transformational geometry: Modality specific and non-specific influences.
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Identifier
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AAI9207107
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identifier
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9207107
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Creator
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O'Donohue, Nancy Elizabeth.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Harry Beilin
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Date
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1991
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Developmental | Education, Mathematics
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Abstract
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The goals of this research were to understand how congenitally blind and sighted children develop knowledge of geometric congruence and transformations and, further, how different modes of processing spatial information affect this development. To achieve these goals we examined congenitally blind and sighted children's reactions to spatial tasks in light of theoretical issues related to geometric knowledge, individual differences and task differences.;The theoretical issues reviewed were: (1) Transformational understanding--Cognitive theory; (2) Correspondences--Constructivist theory; (3) Spatial knowledge in the blind child; (4) Gender differences in spatial knowledge; and (5) Task differences in geometric reasoning.;The subjects were two groups of congenitally blind (n = 18, n = 33) and two groups of sighted (n = 18, n = 24) children from 5 to 19 years of age. Four tasks were administered. Two tasks examined the child's ability to represent nonvisible transformations and two examined the child's knowledge of correspondences and transformations. Because of the nature of the data and population tested, significant results could only be obtained for some tasks. The results below show trends (significant and nonsignificant) in the data.;The results tend to support and extend the Piagetian thesis that all children go through stages of transformational understanding which proceed from intrafigural to interfigural to transfigural knowledge. Further, there may be two sub-stages within the interfigural stage. Regarding correspondences, children appear to follow a constructivist model of end-point integration of parts. An interaction between correspondence and transformational knowledge was seen in the transfigural stage where multiple part correspondences tended to be associated with knowledge of difficult transformations.;Blind/sighted differences were seen generally favoring the sighted. The sighted do significantly better on recognition tasks and some flip tasks. They also tend to use external cues, impose external reference frames, benefit more from perceptual feedback and differentiate parts of the stimulus more easily. The blind appeared to use more movement memory and internal reference frames.;Significant gender differences favoring males were seen in both blind and sighted groups. These seemed to appear in two stages (8 and 14 years of age). Task differences were seen due to task demands, rotational extent, cues, stimulus familiarity and stimulus configurations.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
