Links between literacy skills and accurate spatial relations in representations of the face: comparison of preschoolers, school children, dyslexics, and mentally retarded.
A specific link is found between low or absent literacy skills and a specific misrepresentation of spatial relations exclusively of the upper part of the human face. This misrepresentation, determined by simple measurement, is found in 32% of the pictorial representations of 407 preschoolers whose drawings were published by various authors as well as in 32% of 44 preschoolers tested here. By contrast, after having had instruction in literacy, the proportion of such misrepresentations of the face drops to 7.5% and 10%, respectively, although, as expected, not in the drawings by 236 mildly mentally retarded or by 297 dyslexic children, 33% and 39% of whom, respectively, still misrepresent the face. In addition to a developmental factor, a further one, as yet undetermined, may be at work and related to a specific deficit in representing the spatial relations of the face. Data further support the previously suggested existence of a specific and general trend for a link between literacy skills and accurate representation of the spatial relations of the pattern of the face also noted previously in diverse cultural groups and periods.
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000523:psychology*; D005145:Face; D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000523:psychology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D013028:Space Perception