LA PERCEPTION DES RELATIONS SPATIALES DANS LE DESSIN ET LE DEVELOPPEMENT DES OPERATIONS CONCRETES*

Abstract

Pictorial perception entails complex cognitive skills. Piaget and Inhelder (1948) have shown that the understanding of spatial relations follows a path that leads from topological to Euclidean concepts. We hypothesize that there is a strong correlation between the performance on Piagetian spatial tasks and pictorial perception. The three‐dimensional reconstruction of drawings is a good measure of pictorial perception. The study shows that pictorial perception is correlated significantly ( p < 1%) with the performance on Piagetian spatial tasks, and also, to a lesser degree, on tasks of elementary logic. The spontaneous understanding of the meaning of the pictures (in this case sanitary messages) is related to the understanding of spatial relations, while the relationship is less strong with the recall of the messages.