Preference for Specific Orientation of Abstract Shapes among Zambian Children

Abstract

Experiment I replicates and extends among Grade 3 and Grade 5 urban Zambian schoolchildren findings obtained by Ghent (1961) among U. S. A. pre-school children. The Ss showed consistent preferences for specific orientations of abstract, geometrical shapes, including some of the designs used in the Bender-Gestalt and Koh's Blocks tests. Three hypothetical determinants of these preferences are discussed: (1) location of focal part," (2) "stability," and (3) 'familiarity." Experiment II attempts to assess directly the relative importance of (1) and (3) as well as to examine age-trends among rural and urban Zambian schoolchildren and urban "Western-educated" expatriate children. In both experiments, only limited support was found for the "familiarity" hypothesis. It is concluded that intrinsic perceptual features of abstract shapes give rise, independently of cultural background, to consistent preferences for certain specific spatial orientations of those shapes. A tentative theoretical integration of this phenomenon is made with other results showing crosscultural differences in the difficulty of copying orientation.