Child Development · 1975 · 13 citations · 3 references
EducationCognitionDimensional SalienceAttentionSocial SciencesPsychologyDevelopmental PsychologyCognitive DevelopmentBiggest RectangleDevelopmental DisorderPsychophysicsPerception SystemChild PsychologyBehavioral SciencesCognitive ScienceEarly Childhood DevelopmentResponse ChoiceHuman CognitionExperimental PsychologySocial CognitionChild DevelopmentSpatial CognitionCognitive Psychology
3-year-olds were shown triads of rectangles and asked to select the "big" one, where the biggest rectangle in each triad was neither the tallest nor the widest. Dimensional salience and response choice were highly related. In addition, as saliency of a particular dimension increased relative to the other dimension, significantly more responses were based on that dimension. The results support the notion that the young child does not rely on 1 specific dimension to make judgments of bigness but, rather, attends to the most salient differences among stimuli.
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