Left-Right and Up-Down Mirror Image Confusion in 4-, 5- and 6-Year-Olds

Abstract

Young children under the age of 8-9 years tend to confuse left-right mirror images, and it is thought that their linguistic skills play a crucial role in this phenomenon. However, other aspects of this confusion, such as whether children confuse up-down mirror images or whether the meaningfulness of the stimulus influences matching performance, remain unclear. The present study examined the confusion of left-right and up-down reversed images by 4-, 5-and 6-year-olds using meaningful and meaningless figures in a task in which sample and comparison stimuli were presented simultaneously. Children performed more accurately when presented with meaningful figures and confused both up-down and left-right reversed figures, although they did so less frequently in response to up-down than to left-right reversed figures. Reversal confusion was greatest in 4-year-olds and no significant differences were observed between 5and 6-year-olds. These findings suggest that the ability to discriminate reversed images may be associated with the development of a wide range of cognitive abilities including theory of mind, executive function, and suggestibility.

Taking someone else’s spatial perspective: Natural stance or effortful decentring?

“…Similar proportions of self-centred and decentred perspectives have been reported in blind and sighted people (Shimojo, Sasaki, Parsons, & Torii, 1989) but the vertical inversion corresponding to the adoption of a head-centred perspective was not taken into account. Finally, the fact that vertical inversion was observed only when the head-centred perspective was adopted (see Quality of responses in the Supplementary Materials) reinforces previous observations that the top-bottom axis is less prone to confusion that the left-right axis (Oldfield & Phillips, 1983;Parsons & Shimojo, 1987; see also Farrell, 1979;Takano, 1998;Uehara, 2013). The vertical axis may thus be assigned before the horizontal axis when interpreting tactile symbols.…”

Quantifying attentional effects on the fidelity and biases of visual working memory in young children

“…Although perceptual differences were controlled for across age groups, developmental changes in perceptual processing and the use of reference frames could conceivably modulate the non-target bias effects (Schutte et al, 2017; Simmering & Spencer, 2008). Older children have improved performance on a mirror image discrimination task compared with younger children (4-year-olds), with younger children making greater errors attributed to left–right reversal images than 6-year-olds (Uehara, 2013). In this study, younger children would be more susceptible in reproducing a mirror image of the target object and increasing error variability.…”