Orientation of the diamond and the square revisited

Abstract

Below the age of 7 or 8, children find it very difficult to reproduce a diamond compared with a square. They are also highly sensitive to contextual alignment cues from the age of three years. It is shown here that over the brief age-span of 4-6 years (inclusive), children come to control the weight they give to contextual cues. It is argued that this is a more likely precursor of the older child's ability to cope with obliques, than is the converse process of learning to specify targets and thence to prevent themselves from responding inappropriately to the context. Of course, both target-specification and contextual-responsiveness are manifest at all the ages, but the latter seems to have the leading edge in early development.