Age in the development of closure ability in children.

Abstract

CLOSURE IS the perception of an object or event which is not completely or immediately represented. Previous studies (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) have revealed marked individual differences in this perceptual ability, but have thrown little light on its development. Street's use of a Gestalt Completion Test with school children revealed no consistent or significant differences in scores attributable to age—which later prompted Thurstone (7, p. 9) to remark that the finding was of interest an indication that the test involves some factors which mature at an early age, and it may be taken as indicative of some fundamental and primitive function. The study by Verville and Cameron (9) of age and sex differences in the perception of incomplete pictures by adults revealed slight differences in reaction times and perceptual set attributable to age, but did not reveal a relationship between age and perceptual ability. Street's test comprised only thirteen items in its final form; the items were not of a single class; nor could the particular percepts be presumed to be universally familiar. Verville and Cameron used only ten items, and they were checking age differences between two groups of adults—those aged 16 to 23 and those aged 35 to 56. Both studies are open to the presumption that the tests, subjects, and procedures were not adequate to reveal an association between perceptual ability and age. The present study was undertaken to reveal, through an early age range, the likely association between closure ability and age. The procedure was designed to minimize the differential effects of prior perceptual experience through the use, on the one hand, of subjects of common social and educational background, and, on the other hand, of closure test-items representative of a single class of percepts that might be presumed to be universally familiar. In short, the aim was to correlate closure ability and age in a uni-dimensional perceptual domain.