Shape Constancy as Influenced by Culture, Western Education, and Agel

Abstract

Shape constancy responses, obtained by asking Ss to match the shape of an inclined circular test object with one of a series of comparison ellipses, were obtained for adult groups of educated Senas, uneducated Senas, and educated Europeans, as well as for uneducated Manglanja children between the ages of 5 and 15 years and Manglanja adults. The uneducated African Ss tended to respond to the true shape of the objects regardless of age while the European Ss tended to respond to the retinal image shape; the educated Africans gave responses which were intermediate between those of the uneducated Africans and the educated Europeans. The differences between African Ss and European Ss on shape matching responses were believed to be due to cultural influences, but it could not be determined by the present shape matching method whether the response differences were due to differential responding to the instructions by the cultural groups or to differences in perception.