Perceptual Development, Childhood

David Elkind is one of the leading developmental psychologists of our time. Throughout his long and successful career, he has contributed to our understanding of how children think, behave, and understand the world. In particular, his work in perceptual development has provided insight into how children adopt more mature ways of perceiving the world through interactions with people and objects.

As in much of his other work, Elkind began his research where Jean Piaget, the renowned Swiss developmental psychologist, left off. Piaget is best known for his theory of cognitive development, which states that an underlying thought mechanism determines how one understands and interprets the world. This mechanism develops with age and experience. Piaget and Elkind applied this idea to perceptual development. When young, a child's thought mechanism is centered; that is, he or she is able to process only the dominant aspect of an object. As children age, they become decentered and are thus able to manage more features in their perceptual fields and can use logic to mentally imagine an object in different situations (Elkind, 1975, 1978).

A child's perceptual level, either centered or decentered, affects his or her capability to interpret and mentally manipulate objects within the visual field. One ability that matures with the developing mind is perceptual reorganization. Younger children focus on the dominant aspect within the visual field, such as that a circle is round. In contrast, older children can integrate multiple aspects of their fields of perception to create a holistic image and imagine objects in various situations (Elkind, 1978). Older children can imagine a circle as a wheel or gear. In addition, they are able to reorganize a layout of objects, useful in daily activities such as rearranging furniture. In a sense, younger children see only the quick, first impression of an object, while older children are able to dissect the sum of the object into parts and mentally rearrange them. Elkind tested Piaget's theory of perceptual reorganization in experimental studies with children using pictures of distinct parts and wholes, such as a man made out of fruit. As predicted, younger children focused on one aspect of the picture, either the parts (in this case fruit) or the whole (the man), while older children saw both images simultaneously (Elkind, 1978; Elkind, Anagnostopoulou, & Malone, 1970; Whitestone & Elkind, 1976).

Similar to perceptual reorganization, perceptual exploration, or the systematic scanning of the visual field, is used daily to make sense of the world around us. This skill is essential, for example, to a child in locating her mother in a crowded school parking lot. Elkind found that as children age, they develop new, more effective strategies for perceptual exploration (Elkind, 1978; Elkind & Weiss, 1967). Older children are able to systematically scan a swarming parking lot in a logical manner, such as in rows. In contrast, younger children are unable to employ an efficient strategy and usually require more time to locate or name objects in a visual field.

A third perceptual skill that matures with the developing underlying mechanism is perceptual transport, [Page 820]or the ability to compare objects across distance. The capability to successfully make size judgments across distance increases significantly with age. According to Elkind, younger children center on one aspect of an object and overestimate its size relative to the other object. This tendency lessens as children become perceptually decentered (Elkind, 1978).

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