Discrimination of Three Types of Graphic Stimuli

Abstract

Forty 4-year-olds and forty 6-year-olds were tested on a matching-to-sample discrimination task to determine the relationship between social class status and the visual perception of graphic stimuli which were matched according to critical feature transformations. English letters, letter-like forms, and line-drawings of faces with embedded letters were equally divided into two confusability levels and three task levels. Analysis of variance on error scores revealed differences between age groups, stimulus types, confusability levels, and task levels. Social class differences were observed on highly confusable English letters among 6-year-olds but not among the 4-year-olds. No significant age by social class differences were found on letter-like forms or faces.