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Childrens' spatial ability has been studied from developmental and differential psychology orientations and by information-processing theorists. No unified means of examining spatial ability has been attempted by investigators. The focus of this research is thus based on the integration of developmental predictions with a processing model created to generate and test hypotheses regarding certain spatial competencies of young children. Of primary interest was how young children perform depending on the dimensionality of the spatial materials utilized in the experimental task. One hundred and sixty 4 and 6 year old children were randomly selected for one of four treatment conditions with age and sex distributed equally in each condition. Spatial materials were presented in either two or three dimensions and subjects were required to judge whether a response item also presented in two or three dimensions matched the stimulus display. Across-versus within-dimensional performance was therefore compared in a single study. Five displays were presented ranging in difficulty from simple to complex. Response materials consisted of a correct match on the stimulus item and four error types. Types of errors included a geometric violation (in which the objects in the display were unconnected at one point), a depth violation (lack of the depth dimension), a 90° or 270° rotation violation and a 180° violation. These last two violations were considered orientation errors similar to those children exhibit on perspective-taking tasks. Three separate analyses of variance were performed on the data. Results from each of these analyses indicated that six year old children significantly outperformed four year olds in all conditions. However, of importance to developmental psychology was the finding that all subjects performed as well as they did on a task thought to be quite difficult. Also reiterated in these analyses was the result that within-dimensional performance was significantly better than across-dimensional ability for all subjects. Analysis of display complexity revealed that there was differential success for the subjects based on the complexity of the display. Errors analysis indicated that the rotation and reflection foils created the most difficulty for subjects. This finding was reiterated in the Age X Foil Type interaction and Sex X Stimulus Dimension X Response Dimension X Foil Type interaction, in which four year olds' relative inability to perform on these errors as compared to six year olds was shown. This suggests that the ability to correctly discriminate orientation occurs late in the developmental sequence. While no main effect for sex was indicated by any of the analyses, there was an interesting finding as a result of the Sex X Stimulus Dimension X Response Dimension X Foil Type interaction. When across-dimension performance was examined, it was found that males made relatively more errors of an orientation type than females, exhibiting a possible lack of attention to the provided facilitative reference frame. Results were further discussed in terms of predictions from the hypothetical model and in regard to developmental issues. Limitations of the work were also discussed.

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the Degree of Masters in Counselling Psychology in the Department of Psychology, University of Zululand, 2007. / Institutions of higher learning are faced with ever decreasing space to and from classes, libraries, offices and other facilities. This exploratory study was concerned with the perception of space by students as they constitute the majority in the institutions of higher learning. Two institutions Central University of Technology (Bloemfontein) and Free State School of Nursing campuses were involved in this study. There were 150 subjects who participated in the study, 70 were males and 80 were females. The age range of the participants was 18 to 38 years. The 150 sample of students who participated in the study, 50 were from Free State School of Nursing while 100 were from Central University of Technology. Students' perception on providing space for others was that students seem to be disrespectful of other people's space and the results were statistically significant (p<0.001). With regard to the behaviour displayed by students on campus in relation to space, about sixty nine (69.3%) of the respondents, agreed that they had been asked by other students to give space while about fifty four percent (54.7%) agreed that they were asked by lecturers to give space. Statistically this was approaching a level of statistical significance (p<0.020). Interesting results (52%), suggest that among the cultural groups in the South African context, Blacks seem to be poor in space perception. / National Research Foundation

It is contended that space can act as a metaphor for social relationships. The thesis draws on schema theory from cognitive psychology to explain how the affective qualities of social stimuli serve to bias the 'cognitive maps' of individuals. Supporting evidence is cited from the fields of cognitive, social, environmental and neuro-psychology. The metaphor is tested experimentally from a micro-spatial level (e. g. spatial locations of characters in a photograph) up to a macro-spatial level (spatial locations of towns). The affective valence of the stimuli used were either a priori based (e. g. homes of people already known to the subject, perceived religious predominance of towns in a sectarian setting) or influenced by the experimenter (e. g. captions purporting to inform representations of social scenes in photographs derived from newspapers and magazines). Distortion of perceived distances (between subject and stimuli and between stimuli) form the dependent variable in each experiment. Results in all experiments indicated a strong tendency for the valence of stimuli to bias people in their distance estimations. Relative overestimation of distance was observed for stimuli perceived to be negatively valenced and the reverse for those stimuli perceived to be positively valenced. In a final experiment, distance estimations were examined between a variety of human figures photographed in 'real-world' social encounters. The results were in line with Social Identity Theory, with overestimation observed between groups and underestimation within groups. Results throughout are interpreted in relation to the 'socio-spatial schema' metaphor.

A range of visually guided, spatial goal directed tasks are investigated, using a computational neuroethology approach. Animats are embedded within a bounded, 2-D environment, and map a 1-D visual array, through a convolution network, to a topography preserving motor array that stochastically determines the direction of movement. Temporal difference reinforcement learning modifies the convolution network in response to a reinforcement signal received only at the goal location. Three forms of visual coding are compared: multiscale coding, where the visual array is convolved by Laplacian of Gaussian filters at a range of spatial scales before convolution to determine the motor array; rectified multiscale coding, where the multiscale array is split into positive and negative components; and intensity coding, where the unfiltered visual array is convolved to determine the motor array. After learning, animats are examined in terms of performance, behaviour and internal structure. When animats learn to approach a solitary circle, of randomly varying contrast, rectified multiscale coding animats learn to outperform multiscale and intensity coding animats in both independent and coarse scale noise conditions. Analysis of the learned internal structure shows that rectified multiscale filtering facilitates learning by enabling detection of the circle at scales least affected by noise. Cartwright and Collett (1983) showed that honeybees learn the angle subtended by a featureless landmark to guide movement to a food source at a fixed distance from the landmark, and furthermore, when tested with only the edges of the landmark, still search in the same location. In a simulation of this experiment, animats are reinforced for moving to where the angle subtended by a solitary circle falls within a certain range. Rectified multiscale filtering leads to better performing animats, with fewer hidden units, in both independent and coarse scale visual noise conditions, though for different reasons in each case. Only those animats with rectified multiscale filtering, that learn in the presence of coarse scale noise, show similar generalisation to the honeybees. Collett, Cartwright and Smith (1986) trained gerbils to search at locations relative to arrangemments of landmarks and tested their search patterns in modifications of the training arrangements. These experiments are simulated with landmark distance coded as either a 1-D intensity array, or a 2-D vector array, plus a simple compass sense. Vector coding animats significantly outperform those using intensity coding and do so with fewer hidden units. Furthermore, vector coding animats show a close match to gerbil behaviour in tests with modified landmark arrangements.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [100]-108).