Effects of visual training in decentering of perception :

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of visual training on decentering of perception of Vietnamese refugee children at the preoperational period by means of ambiguous pictures of Elkind (1964). These children were reared in a male chauvinistic society in which the male child has a very auspicious opportunity to enhance his full development in every aspect: physical, psychological, and intellectual. In addition, for thousands of years young children had to commit to memory a series of grapheme-phoneme combinations and were forced to write them many times as exercises in the first stage. Based on a sample of 80 randomly selected high socioeconomic status and low socioeconomic status Vietnamese refugee boys and girls ranged in age from 4 to 5 and 6 to 7 years living in five counties in Northern California, the results of this study showed that at the preoperational period: (a) there were no significant differences in the centering process of perception in Vietnamese refugee boys and girls of different socioeconomic backgrounds at different age levels, and (b) there were significant differences in the decentering process of perception between the control group with no training and the experimental group with special training. The results were interpreted from the standpoint of Piaget's genetic theory of perception.