Configuration and position encoding in children

2 experiments were carried out to clarify the process by which children encode briefly presented spatial positions. The task in both experiments was judging whether a test dot occupied the same position on a card as any 1 of a number of dots which had been presented tachistoscopically. Subjects were first, third, and fifth graders. In the first experiment, performance improved with grade level for stimulus arrays composed of more than 1 dot. The finding contrasts with an earlier report of only minimal developmental change in position encoding, but the procedures of the earlier study appear to have permitted a confounding of position and configural encoding. In the second experiment, position encoding was found to improve with increasing pattern goodness at all age levels. The finding attests to a powerful influence of pattern information on the perceptual system and further suggests that position information is encoded within configural information.