Studies in Perceptual Development: I. The Decentering of Perception1

This is the first of several studies which will seek to explore perceptual development by means of an original set of ambiguous pictures. In the present study two opposed interpretations of figure-ground reversal were the theoretical starting point. The first interpretation derives from the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. According to Piaget (9), is not an innately fixed mechanism for registering stimuli but is a developing system which becomes increasingly adaptive with age. In the young child is passive and dominated by the best organization of the visual field. With the development of perceptual operations (internalized actions), however, the child's becomes active and spontaneously restructures the field into its many possible organizations. Piaget defines the decentering of perception as the development from the passive, best form dominated of the young child to the active, operation directed, of the older child and adult. To make the operational character of concrete, consider the following illustrative example taken from Piaget's (9) discussion. Imagine a line drawing of a circle upon a white card and let EA = the enclosed area of the circle, SA = the surrounding area, C = the contour, F the figure, and G = the ground. Now to perceive the contour line as a circle on a white field, the child must perform the following operations: EA + C F; SA C = G. On the other hand, to perceive the contour line as the edge of a hole in a white screen, the child must perform the following operations: EA C = G; SA + C = F. In Piaget's view the ability to perform these operations,3 and thus spontaneously to reverse figure and ground, appears only gradually with increasing age.