Psychological Model of the Process of Perception of Virtual Objects by Preschoolers

Abstract

The study of children’s perception of computer models of objects (virtual objects), as different from objects of the physical world in their characteristics, is a urgent problem, but poorly researched. The goal of research is to develop a psychological model of the process of perception and recognition by preschoolers of a virtual 3D object when performing actions with it on the iPad screen. The developed model is empirically verified and makes it possible to explain the results obtained in the experiment to study the differences in the recognition of a virtual 3D object and its real prototype after perception under conditions of unimodal (visual, haptic) and bimodal (visual-haptic) perception. The experiment involved 115 preschool children (4—6 years old), divided into 5 randomized groups. It was found that during haptic recognition of a previously presented virtual object, children significantly more often chose a distractor figure that had the same dimension as the original object, but differed from it in the absence of shape details (φ * emp = 1.697, p <0.05). These results are explained by the specifics of the nature of interaction with virtual objects on the iPad screen (impact on the object without direct contact with it), as well as the discrepancy between expectations based on the experience of interacting with real objects.