Chris Lange-Kuettner

Leibniz Institute Bamberg · Psychology

The ability to effectively handle partly false feedback is an important skill because it can disrupt an already mastered ability. An instant and drastic deterioration occurred in 8- to 11-year-old children’s sequence learning of four left-right button presses from close to ceiling performance with 100% deterministic feedback to about 30% accuracy w...

The current study tested object drawing, object naming and object-in-scene perception. We tested older people with Alzheimer’s dementia (AD) because their object drawings have often lost their typical contours. We investigated whether intensive practice could improve or recover deteriorated graphic object representations in three tasks, object nami...

How would human players negotiate a spatial array with a randomly behaving partner? In an interactive, online, zero-sum grid game, we tested whether and how players create areas and place sequences by coloring-in places in a 20x20 matrix (261 human adults, 261 machine partners, N = 522). Several indicators showed that human players followed an inte...

The relation between perceptual and conceptual knowledge is a longstanding research question in developmental psychology. Here we tested children's dependence on figurative information with a reaction time/accuracy task. A sample of 151 children from 5 to 10 years were assessed from two multi-cultural and multi-racial schools in the London (UK) bor...

Previous research showed that uncertain, stochastic feedback drastically reduces children’s performance. Here, 145 children from 7 to 11 years learned sets of sequences of four left-right button presses, each press followed by a red/green signal. After each of the 15% randomly false feedback trials, children received a verbal debrief that it was ei...

The negative space drawing technique refers to drawing the transparent space around and between objects, rather than drawing the objects themselves. This space-based instruction is thought to attenuate object-specific visual attention and to enhance perception of a spatial expanse. Developmentally, it is equivalent to the Piagetian dichotomic space...

Most feedback we receive or give is correct (deterministic feedback), though a small fraction can be wrong for various reasons. Children need to cope with receiving some portion of wrong feedback (stochastic feedback). It is still unknown if better social functioning and communication skills or outstanding intelligence (IQ) or chronological age sup...

Objectives We investigated the relationships between fine motor skills, fitness, anthropometrics, gender and perceived motor performance in school beginners. The aim of our study was to delineate whether and to what extent fine motor control would show meaningful synchrony with other motor variables in the age of onset of handwriting in school. Met...

Smoking and caffeine improves some aspects of cognitive performance but it also brings with it some serious cardiovascular health risks. We investigated whether quiet and focused visual attention can reduce blood pressure in nicotine and coffee consumers. Participants either smoked (n=40), or drank coffee (n=40) on a daily basis. The control group...

Most feedback that we receive or give is correct (deterministic feedback), but a small fraction can be wrong for various reasons. Children need to cope with some portion of wrong feedback (stochastic feedback). It is still unknown if better social functioning and communication skills, or outstanding intelligence (IQ) or chronological age supports c...

The research of spatial cognition encompasses many approaches, pathways in (virtual) mazes, places in arrays, random object movements, to mention just a few. The current study investigates whether areas become composed when players have the opportunity to create their own playing field by coloring in places in a grid, taking turns with the system (...

Smoking and caffeine improves some aspects of cognitive performance but it also brings with it some serious cardiovascular health risks. We investigated whether quiet and focused visual attention can reduce blood pressure in nicotine and coffee consumers. Participants either smoked (n=40), or drank coffee (n=40) on a daily basis. The control group...

Previous research showed that infants in their first year listened longer to bird sounds (seagulls) than to songbirds, while this was the reverse in adults. This preferential listening occurred independently of infants living at the seaside, or inland, but increased categorization occurred in infants in the Scottish harbor town. The preference was...

The impact of sex-specific personality traits has often been investigated for visuo-spatial tasks such as mental rotation, but less is known about the influence of personality traits on visual search. We investigated whether the Big Five personality traits Extroversion (E), Openness (O), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Neuroticism (N)...

Aim and Objective. The drawing test assesses the developmental transition of children’s spatial categorization from object-place binding (drawing a circle around each individual dot) to objects-region (or objects-area) binding (drawing a circle around matching pairs of dots). Matching dots either have a shorter distance to each other than to other...

The Common Region Test (CRT) is a useful spatial categorization test that assesses spatial binding of individual objects to places, or pairs of matching objects to a region. Our aim was to test whether ethnic differences exist in the CRT of typically developing children and those with special needs (N = 117). Typically developing children were more...

Introduction : The Common Region Test (CRT) is useful for predicting children’s visual memory as individual object-place binding predicted better object memory while objects-region coding predicted better place memory. Aim : To test children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with regards to spat...

We investigated mental rotation in children by systematically varying the adult cube aggregate’s set size, rotation angle, and picture/depth plane rotations in a new test. Eighty 4- to 11-year-old mainly middle-class children (British Indian and British African majority and white minority) (40 girls and 40 boys) were assessed using the new matching...

INTRODUCTION: Dementia is often accompanied by deficits in visual and spatial cognition (e.g. Mielke et al., 1995; Rizzo et al., 2000). We investigated whether the degenerative process could be halted or reversed by daily cognitive exercises. METHOD: Ten older participants with dementia and ten healthy controls were trained on five consecutive days...

We investigated the impact of the Mozart effect on word memory when music was heard in the delay rather than using music to induce mood or as background music. A sample of N = 84 participants was randomly assigned to one of three groups listening to a one-minute sound clip of Mozart (Kleine Nachtmusik) or Mahler (Adagietto) during the delay, with a...

We investigated whether healthy older adults who live in female-dominated old age care homes can identify the gender of male and female faces of people from different ethnicities in the same way as young adults. We hypothesized that this mainly female environment would lead by exposure to a female-gender bias. A sample of 40 participants aged 20-30...

Research on children’s drawings in general follows methods and concepts in developmental research. Early concepts of intellectual and visual realism in drawing are described. Children’s drawing of objects and space systems, the impact of intelligence, perception, neuropsychological status and the onset of writing are explained. Structure, expressio...

We investigated the effect of parents’ AQ, their sex and the sex of their children on their toy preference. In a computerized forced-choice shopping task, adults selected from cuddly and social role-playing toys (social toys), academic, music and sports toys (educational toys) and construction sets as well as cars (technical toys). A sex-balanced h...

Typically, infants younger than four months fail to attend to the left side of their spatial field, most likely because of an innate asymmetrical tonic neck reflex (ATNR). In a critical transition, by four months of age, infants begin to reach and develop depth perception; and, by five months of age, they tend to monitor the entire spatial field. H...

The current study tests whether memory deterioration due to pro-active interference (PI) in verbal recall could be halted via block repetition potentially leading to an increased memory consolidation. We also tested whether bilinguals would be better shielded against memory deterioration than monolinguals because they constantly need to enrich thei...

Gender differences are often seen as either biologically determined or culturally acquired or conditioned. However, in an age where gender equality is the main target, neither peer reviewers nor students show much interest in gender differences. Moreover, not only do people try to integrate their 'ying' and 'yang' in their personalities also transg...

We investigated the role of children's conceptual understanding and ballgame experience when judging whether a football player is in an offside position, or not. In the offside position, a player takes advantage of being behind the defence line of the opposing team and just waits for the ball to arrive in order to score a goal. We explained the off...

The study investigated sequence learning from stochastic feedback in boys with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and typically developed (TD) boys. We asked boys with ASD from Nigeria and the UK as well as age- and gender-matched controls (also males only) to deduce a sequence of four left and right button presses, LLRR, RRLL, LRLR, RLRL, LRRL and R...

We investigated the role of children’s conceptual understanding and ballgame experience when judging whether a football player is in an offside position, or not. In the offside position, a player takes advantage of being behind the defence line of the opposing team and just waits for the ball to arrive in order to score a goal. We explained the off...

The study investigated sequence learning from stochastic feedback in boys with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and typically developed (TD) boys. We asked boys with ASD from Nigeria and the UK as well as age-and gender-matched controls (also males only) to deduce a sequence of four left and right button presses, LLRR, RRLL, LRLR, RLRL, LRRL and RL...

This study introduces the new Rotated Colour Cube Test (RCCT) as a measure of object identification and mental rotation using single 3D colour cube images in a matching-to-sample procedure. One hundred 7- to 11-year-old children were tested with aligned or rotated cube models, distracters and targets. While different orientations of distracters mad...

Sequential strategies of digitized tablet drawings by 6-7-yr.-old children (N = 203) of average and below-average handwriting ability were analyzed. A Beery Visual Motor Integration (BVMI) and a Bender-Gestalt (BG) pattern, each composed of two tangential shapes, were predefined into area sectors for automatic analysis and adaptive mapping of the d...

Theories of verbal rehearsal usually assume that whole words are being rehearsed. However, words consist of letter sequences, or syllables, or word onset-vowel-coda, amongst many other conceptualizations of word structure. A more general term is the ‘grain size’ of word units (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). In the current study, a new method measured th...

Summary.—Sequential strategies of tablet digitized drawings by 6–7-yr.-old children (N = 203) of average and below average handwriting ability were analyzed. A Beery Visual Motor Integration (BVMI) and a Bender-Gestalt (BG) pattern, each composed of two tangential shapes, were predefined into area sectors for automatic analysis and adaptive mapping...

Children can draw visually realistic objects if they know how to focus on the embedded object contour as shown by the Embedded Figure Test. However, an object contour is not a useful visual cue for drawing in perspective. Even at age eleven, only a minority of children draw in perspective. The current brief review shows what kind of stimulus model...

As in Lewin's theory of the interaction between field forces and figures in real life, Lange-Kuttner explains that similar interactions occur between figures and spatial fields in pictorial space. Young children initially draw just figures in empty space with only implicit spatial relations, but gradually the spatial context becomes explicit and el...

Drawing in perspective seems to involve a prolonged development and is not usually present in children’s drawings before about age 9—at least as found in previous research. In the study presented here, we built several three-dimensional spatial models to simulate the developmental stages of children’s spatial drawing systems, a simple platform with...

The current study investigated the relationship between word utterance preparation time and word articulation duration in young adults. In a stratified sample, 40 monolinguals’ (20 males and 20 females) and 40 bilinguals’ (20 males and 20 females) word pronunciation of English words vs. derived, scrambled non-words as well as the hesitation before...

The study investigated whether mental age in children, as assessed by the IQ in the Draw-A-Person (DAP) test (Naglieri, 1988), can be improved by practice. In addition, it was tested whether children needed novel content to keep up their performance level during test repetition. The DAP test was given to 6-, 8-, 10-, and 12-year-old children (N = 8...

The current study tested gender differences in the developmental transition from drawing cubes in two- versus three dimensions (3D), and investigated the underlying spatial abilities. Six- to nine-year-old children (N = 97) drew two occluding model cubes and solved several other spatial tasks. Girls more often unfolded the various sides of the cube...

A reaction time/accuracy experiment investigated the development of visual memory for object shape and location in 6–7- and 8–9-year-old children and adults (N = 72) in three array types: (1) an empty screen, (2) a frame delineating a region, and (3) a grid with individually delineated places. A maximized learning design was used. Explicit array bo...

We know that stochastic feedback impairs children's associative stimulus-response (S-R) learning (Crone et al., 2004a; Eppinger et al., 2009), but the impact of stochastic feedback on sequence learning that involves deductive reasoning has not been not tested so far. In the current study, 8- to 11-year-old children (N = 171) learned a sequence of f...

Based on the assumption that boys are more likely to tackle reading based on the visual modality, we assessed reading skills, visual short-term memory (VSTM), visual long-term memory for details (VLTM-D), and general non-verbal cognitive ability in primary school children. Reading was within the normal range in both accuracy and understanding. Ther...

Reaction times are still rarely reported in developmental psychology although they are an indicator of the neural maturity of children’s information processing system. Competence and capacity are confounded in development, where children may be able to reason, or remember, but are unable to cope with information processing load. Furthermore, there...

Sex differences in a visually realistic drawing style were examined using the model of a curvy cup as an inanimate object, and the Draw-A-Person test (DAP) as a task involving animate objects, with 7- to 12-year-old children (N = 60; 30 boys). Accurately drawing the internal detail of the cup--indicating interest in a depth feature--was not depende...

A series of neural network simulations investigated whether the original Ebbinghaus' German non-sense syllables would be activated and processed in their raw format, or needed association with a preceding neig hborin g item to be best remembered. The 'predictive' autoassociative network was unable to reduce the error rate below .50, and node activa...

Word structure effects denote that familiar letter sequences are easier to remember and to read than unfamiliar, or new letter sequences of less frequently occurring words. Thus, it is plausible that a quantitative increase of novel word structure would predict reading difficulty. E.g., number words would be easier to read than rhymed words with a...

The study investigates the relationship between array priming and the self-generated conceptualization of arrays in spatial memory. Nursery and primary school age children and adults ( N = 70) were tested with an object and place memory reaction-time/accuracy task, once first using a frame (containment and figurative thought) and (in another sessio...

Birdsong and human speech share some genetic origins (Haesler, Rochefort, Georgi, Licznerski, Osten, & Scharff, 2007; Vargha-Khadem, Gadian, Copp, & Mishkin, 2005). In two studies (N = 67 infants and N = 28 adults) in Scotland (UK) and Saxony (Germany), perceptual discrimination of innate, repetitive, lower frequency sea-bird sounds vs. learned, me...

Previous research showed that drawing facilitates memory (Bruck, Melnyk, & Ceci, 2000; Butler, Gross, & Hayne, 1995; Gross & Hayne, 1999). The current study investigated whether drawing strategies could predict spatial memory. Children show a developmental change from drawing object-place binding (object-based coding) to object-region binding (spac...

The current study analyzed figure size modification in different types of spatial context (C. Lange-Küttner, 1997, Lange-Küttner, 2004) for sequence and practice effects. Children of 7, 9, and 11 years of age, as well as 17-year-olds, drew figures in a series of ready-made spatial axes systems, which (a) logically increased in dimensional complexit...

The study is a commentary on the research of Cooper, Uller, Pettifer and Stole (Acta Paediatrica 2009). Cooper et al found that 6 - to 7-year-olds attentinal system appeared to be more supported by fewer changes and longer durations of views on a deading aloud teacher. Lange-Küttner suggests that future research might test (1) the left-right bias r...

Drawing behavior has occupied European psychologists from the turn of the last century. Drawing behavior was not frequently studied in relation to cognitive development. Since the 1970's and 1980's, a refreshed interest in drawing from developmental and cognitive psychologists from an empirical, experimental, statistically underpinned perspective h...

Most studies on notation-fingering mapping used the piano where one finger covers one key to produce one tone. This study used the recorder as a model, where learning of finger combinations is needed to produce one tone. In three simulations, a 13 x 5 x 5 x 10 three-layer feedforward neural network was required to transform a binary spatial represe...

Drawing and its analysis has been an important discipline of Developmental Psychology since the early twentieth century. This unique collection of essays unites leading empirical researchers from Europe, the United States and Canada to provide a valuable introduction to state-of- the-art drawing research. Focusing on the core problems associated wi...

The A-not-B task is a marker task for infant development where an infant searches for an object being hidden twice, in two consecutive places. In two studies N = 70 infants plus 40 controls were tested in this task using two separate, infant-sized tables. In the first study, the separate tables were joined in front of the infant to form one area. N...

Already the earliest pictorial depictions show rotated objects, demonstrating evolutionary origins of mental rotation. Unlike children do with their drawing sheets, cave artists could not rotate the wall on which they were painting. This study investigated whether the fixation of the drawing medium, which prevented practical rotation, has an impact...

The study investigated at what age children draw boundaries around pairs of objects that share either similarity or proximity. In two studies (N=132 and N=252) using a Wertheimer array, a clear age trend between 4 and 8 years showed that while young children were more likely to code objects into individual regions, older children were more likely t...

Due to the late developmental onset of reading, it appears to be more malleable than other cognitive functions. In the present study, German- and English-spoken reading beginners were compared with respect to reading of words with increasingly novel word structure. A clear gradual effect of word novelty was found in English speakers only, while in...

Pictorial space can be conceptualized as aggregate space (where figures compete for limited available space) or as axial space (where space is infinite and exists independently of figures). That these two kinds of space concepts follow a developmental sequence was tested by investigating size regulation mechanisms in 7- to 12-year-old children's fi...

We investigated the emergence of visually realistic contour in the human figure drawing. Young children initially draw geometric and regular parts, which they combine in an additive fashion. Thus, their human figures look artificial. In one longitudinal study covering ages 6-10 years, and two cross-sectional studies covering ages 5-11 years, we exa...

In order to assess poor mental development, we must be aware of the normal development against which to measure up what is supposed to be delayed, deviant or malfunctioning. Experimental Child Psychology has traced parameters of the developing cognitive system of the infant which are important factors that influence the configuration of a normally...

The present study investigated modularity of object and place memory in children with the reaction time/accuracy paradigm. The memory task was presented in two spatial arrays, a frame with landmarks and a grid. Modularity was tested using perceptual size judgment (what-interference) and movement direction judgment (where-interference). Latencies of...

The present study investigated whether sensitivity to object violations in perception as well as in action would vary with age. Five-, 6-, and 11-yr.-old children and adults solved tasks which involved perception only, motoric indication of parts, actual assembly of parts, and drawing of a violated figure. In perception, object violation was the on...

Investigated modularity of object and place memory in children with the reaction time/accuracy paradigm. The children were 3–5, 7–8, and 9–10 yrs old. The memory task was presented in 2 spatial arrays, a frame with landmarks and a grid. Modularity was tested using perceptual size judgment (what-interference) and movement direction judgment (where-i...

Infants from 16 to 20 weeks were videotaped while being presented with objects traversing a 60 cm distance. Four conditions were tested: (1) induced movement, holding the object; (2) induced movement, pushing the object; (3) self-propelled mechanical movement, object moving by an internal clockwork; (4) self-propelled biological movement, animate o...

Already young children can differentiate written words as they map local word structure. The effect of familiarity and novelty of word structure in visual and auditory working memory was investigated in 33 5–6 yr olds, 34 7 yr olds, and 25 8 yr olds. Accuracy for spoken words increased with novelty of word structure, novelty causing a perceptual sa...

Infants from 16 to 20 weeks were presented with objects moving across a 60-cm distance. Tracking increased between 16 and 18 weeks, reaching increased at 18 weeks, and arm lifts (swipes) showed no age change. A right spatial field bias in tracking disappeared gradually. Swipes occurred most often in front of the object, when it was moving in the ce...

Bender Gestalt cards of Pascal and Suttel, simplified by the author, and basic graphic patterns used in neuropsychological assessment by Mai and Marquardt were used in a speeded copying task. Children between 4 and 6 years were drawing with a wireless pen on a pressure-sensitive graphic tablet linked to a computer. Hand pressure, velocity of hand m...

Studied whether breast-fed infants were able to better focus and perform the AB task (E. L. Bjork and E. M. Cummings, 1984) than nonbreast-fed infants. Ss were 47 normal Scottish infants (aged 23–45 wks; breast fed) and 33 normal Scottish infants (aged 22–45 weeks; not breast fed). Infants were given the AB task to perform 3 times. Results of the 2...

In the present study, intraindividual development of the ability to modify the size of the human figure drawing was investigated. In a longitudinal data set with repeated measurement at ages 7, 9, and 12 it was shown that size was reduced between 7 and 9 years. Three factors were found to be responsible for size variation of the human figure drawin...

This chapter considers the relevance of Piagetian theory for the study of the acquisition of graphic competence. We refer to Piaget, Inhelder and Szeminska's earlier work on the development of spatial cognition and on Piaget and Inhelder's (P&I's) later work on mental imagery. First, we show that P&I's theory of the development of children's space...

(from the preface) Children's drawing is a topic of considerable theoretical and practical significance to students and professionals in a range of specialisms, including art education, nursery and primary school education, as well as the psychology of perception and cognitive development. In recent years there have been a number of new and interes...

(from the chapter) This chapter deals with individual differences in the development of graphic competence related to social factors such as gender and the socioeconomic status of the family of the child. In the first section the universalist position will be described as well as views that are critical to this position. Universalists basically ass...

Review of experiments on drawing in children, longitudinal study on space and human figure drawing

Empirical study on spatial perspective and human figure drawing in 9-11-year old psychiatric and neurotypical children

Projective space has two applications, one applies to individual pictorial objects, and one applies to the wider space, the latter will be called overall space, or space system, in the following text. The basic assumption in this chapter is that spatial objects are conceptually related to the type of space system which contains them, as would be pr...