台大心理系

Developmental trends in child strategies and performance in processing pictorial information is examined using a puzzle-solving task with a group of 1487 children aged 7 to 16. In Study 1, we used subjective measures to analyze participant strategies in processing pictorial information by recording their reasons for each successful trial in solving puzzles. In Study 2, we used performance measures to evaluate the correlation between children’s strategies in processing pictorial information and their performance in solving puzzles. In both studies, the amount of pictorial information provided to participants is varied by changing the number of puzzle pieces and the use of different puzzle pictures. Our studies indicate that children younger than 12 years of age are inclined to use local information to perceive pictures, while children older than 12 years of age are inclined to use configural information to perceive pictures. Our results provide quantitative evidence for a continuous transition from using local strategies to using configural strategies in puzzle solving with increasing age. Our experimental results also suggest that younger children outperform older ones in solving puzzles of large number of pieces, due to different strategies of puzzle solving.