Shedding new light on an old problem: The estimation of shadow sizes in children and adults.
Two experiments using the 'projection of shadows' paradigm investigated multidimensional reasoning, implicit and explicit knowledge, and the nonlinearity concept in 5-, 9-, and 13-year-olds and adults. Participants estimated the resulting shadow lengths of differently sized objects, placed at varying distances from a light source. Experiment 1 (N=80) revealed that, on the group level, 5-year-olds took both object size and light-object distance into account when estimating shadow size. Moreover, half of the children in this age group even considered the subordinate distance dimension. In addition, we found a large discrepancy between implicit and explicit knowledge about shadows in 5-year-olds that decreased with age. Finally, only a minority of older participants and very few younger children recognized the nonlinear relationship between light-object distance and shadow size, suggesting domain dependence of the nonlinearity concept. Experiment 2 (N=20) predominately replicated the findings for 5-year-olds using slightly different stimuli.
Ebersbach
Mirjam
M
Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Leiden University, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands. mirjam.ebersbach@ped.kuleuven.be
Resing
Wilma C M
WC
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D003210:Concept Formation; D003469:Culture; D004215:Distance Perception; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D009903:Optical Illusions; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D012858:Size Perception