Poster #39 - The relationship between children’s scale errors and cultural differences

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

The scale error is a phenomenon whereby young children try to carry out impossible behaviors on miniature versions of everyday objects, for example trying to get into a miniature car. Previous work suggests that scale errors may be associated with a failure to inhibit familiar category representations (so that, e.g., seeing a miniature car activates the representation of a previously encountered child-sized identical car); however, the link between category learning and the scale error is yet to be directly tested. Moreover, several studies indicate that object recognition differs cross-culturally; while Asian children process objects holistically, Western children identify them locally (Kuwabara & Smith, 2016). However, whether cultural differences in processing object features (e.g, size, category-relevant features) relates to scale error production is unknown. Here, we directly examined the relationship between children’s scale errors and their ability to detect the differences between object properties, as indexed by performance on a categorization task, across cultures.
40 typically-developing Japanese children and 40 typically-developing English children aged 18 to 24 months participated. Participants completed a scale error task, first playing with child-size toys (car, table, slide, shoes), then miniature versions of these objects, and their scale errors were recorded. Next, in a screen-based categorization task, children were familiarized with individual images from a novel animal category and their category learning was tested.
Twenty Japanese children and fifteen British children made scale errors, with no difference in frequency between groups (t(77.00) = 0.75, p = .45). Next, we used performance in the categorization task and country to predict children’s scale error production. A linear regression revealed an interaction between country and categorization (β = 85.17, p = .0063). Two further regressions on data from each country separately revealed that while there was no relationship between categorization and scale error production for the Japanese children (β = -20.75, p = .17), there was a relationship in the UK children (β = 64.41, p = .018): British children who showed greater target looking in the categorization task made more scale errors.
As noted, previous research demonstrates that while Western children detect local features, Asian children process visual scenes globally. While both processing styles may lead to successful categorization, for UK children a greater focus on local features (e.g., car wheels) in the scale error task may have led to less encoding of global features, in particular, size. Thus, UK children who performed better on the category learning task based on detailed encoding of differences between local stimulus features may have been less likely process the size of the miniature objects in the scale error task, leading to greater rates of scale error production. These results highlight the importance for future work of direct cross-cultural comparison of children’s visual categorization processes. More broadly, this study is the first to compare children’s scale errors cross-culturally, and indicates that low-level object processing contributes to this intriguing phenomenon.

Authors

• Mikako Ishibashi, Ochanomizu University/ Lancaster University
  Presenting Author

• Katherine E Twomey, University of Manchester
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gert Westermann, Lancaster University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Izumi Uehara, Ochanomizu University
  Non-Presenting Author