The Formation and Development of Perceptual Activity

Children’s Drawings

“…Zinchenko et al (1963) showed that there were differences between the perceptive actions of children when they "recognized" familiar objects and when they looked at unfamiliar ones. Two types of perceptive actions can therefore be distinguished-actions of recognition and actions of familiarization.…”

“…Two types of perceptive actions can therefore be distinguished-actions of recognition and actions of familiarization. In experiments using recordings of eye movements, Zinchenko et al (1963) found that between 3 and 6 years of age the number of eye movements increased during the process of familiarization with a new object, whereas it decreased in the recognition of familiar ones. Such a result seems to indicate that the visual exploration of unknown objects becomes more intense, whereas the visual contact with known objects gets less intense with age.…”

Literature review on the preschool pedestrian

“…Initially, the number of eye movements increases but then they decline. Whereas the three-year-old children in the Zinchenko et al (1963) study initially made very few excursions from the center, familiarization with the picture increased their eye movements until they were approximately equal to the number made by the six-year-olds. Subsequent presentations of a stimulus enhances eye movements only up to a certain point, after which there is a decline with additional viewing.…”

“…The scanning patterns of three-, four-, five-, and six-year-old children were photographed by Zinchenko, Van Chzhi-tsin, and Tarakanov (1963) while the children inspected patterns that they were asked to either familiarize themselves with or to identify. The youngest children showed very little activity during familiarization, since their fixations tended to cluster around the center of the pattern where the camera lens was located.…”

The wide-angle reflection eye camera for visual choice and pupil size

“…Line-of-sight studies of visual choice began with the experimenter watching the eyes without making any photographic record (Staples, 1932). Recording the eye by motion pictures (Ling, 1942;Fitts, Jones, & Milton, 1949) was followed by recording the reflection of the scene in the eye to indicate visual choice (Fantz, 1965;Zinchenko, 1963;Hershenson, 1964;Cowey, 1963;Cowey & Weiskrantz, 1963;Berkson & Fitzgerald, 1963). These methods have often contained one or other of three drawbacks now removed by the present method: (1) photographic records were usually made through a hole in the center of the display, with the result that Ss tended to look at the edges of this gap rather than at the surrounding display; (2) very high lighting intensities, up to 5000 ft-L, were used, which would glare like snow in sunlight; (3) it was difficult (or sometimes even impossible) to get a numerical reading in terms of a grid reference of the location of the gaze on the stimulus scene.…”