title: The influence of pattern type on children's block design performance.
abstract: This study sought to determine what factors contribute to normal developmental changes in performance on the block design task. The target models were systematically varied to emphasize global, intermediate, and local pattern structures. One hundred children between 4.5 and 9 years of age were tested in the first experiment. Correct performance and error types differed significantly as a function of age and pattern type. Broken configuration errors were particularly common for the global patterns. In the second experiment, 48 children between 4.5 and 8 years of age were tested using designs with a superimposed grid (cued condition). Error rates were lower in the cued condition and broken configuration errors were less frequent. These results suggest that children have more difficulty parsing more cohesive patterns, but they can modify their strategies when the square matrix is provided by the pattern structure.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0109, USA.
authors.forename: N A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Akshoomoff
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Stiles
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D011594:Psychometrics; D012016:Reference Values; D014888:Wechsler Scales / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*