Le Caractere Topologique Des Premieres Representations Spatiales De L'enfant: Examen Des Hypotheses De Piaget
Title:
Le Caractere Topologique Des Premieres Representations Spatiales De L'enfant: Examen Des Hypotheses De Piaget
Author:
Pinard, Adrien Laurendeau, Monique
Appeared in:
International journal of psychology
Paging:
Volume 1 (1966) nr. 3 pages 243-255
Year:
1966
Contents:
The topological nature of the child's early spatial representations, Piaget's hypotheses revisited. — Three experiments bearing on Piaget's hypotheses on the topological nature of the child's early concepts of space are reported. The results of the first experiment, replicating Piaget's stereognostic technique on a larger scale, were shown to confirm the earliness of topological discriminations, but it was found also that some simple Euclidian discriminations (curvilinear vs rectilinear, indented vs non-indented forms) were not more difficult. The second experiment has shown that the child relied rather on topological than on simple Euclidian attributes when both types of attributes were presented in a confictual situation; otherwise, the simple Euclidian discriminations were easier. In a third experiment, using a drawing technique along with visual exploration, topological discriminations proved easier than Euclidian discriminations in one instance only (open-closed vs curvilinear-rectilinear forms). It is suggested in conclusion that the child's early discriminations are not based on topology as such, but on certain geometrical properties which are fundamental to topology itself.
Journal description