Preschoolers’ Eye-Movements During Visual-spatial Imagery Reconstruction

It is the mental image of shape, color, brightness, and orientation of the objects based on the visual activity that form the visual imagery, while without the direct influence of external information. As the core of spatial intelligence, visual-spatial imagery ability has a critical influence on children spatial ability and intellectual development. Therefore, to research the reconstruction of children visual-spatial imagery ability has a great theoretical and practical significance on early education and intellectual development.Previous studies of children visual-spatial imagery ability focused on the ability of mental rotation, and based on the response-time paradigm and accuracy. However, these studies can not explain deeply the mechanism of visual imagery construction. This study used eye tracking techniques and perception-interference-image three-phase paradigm to research children and adults eye-movements characteristics of image perception and imagery phase, especially the role of eye-movements in visual-spatial imagery construction.This study was composed of two parts, experiment1, which chose adults as subjects. aimed at providing reference indicators for the study of children. It was a2(freedom level of eye movements in perception:free, fixed) X2(phase:perception, imagery) within-subject design. Experiment1examined eye-movements characteristics of image perception and imagery phase within the different freedom level of eye movements in perception phase. Experiment2chose5-6years old preschoolers as subjects, it was a2(freedom level of eye movements in perception:free, fixed) X2(phase:perception, imagery) X (complexity of image:simple, complex) within-subject design. Experiment2examined the role of eye-movements in children visual-spatial imagery reconstruction and influence of image complexity on function of eye movements. Conclusions are as follows:1. In the study of imagery, the indicators obtained by eye tracking techniques are more sensitive and more stable than correct rate. 2. There is internal connections between eye movements and children visual-spatial imagery reconstruction:eye movements do exist during the process of children visual-spatial imagery reconstruction and play a functional role.3. In visual-spatial imagery reconstruction task, preschoolers’have not yet developed similar strategies as adults have. They expressed different processing and phycological resources characteristics from the adults.