The role of stimulus alignment in children's memory for line orientation

In traditional tests of the "oblique effect," simultaneously presented mirror-image obliques are symmetrically aligned about a vertical axis, while vertical and horizontal stimuli are asymmetrically aligned. This work establishes that configurational cues associated with different alignments play an important role in children's memory for line orientation. In experiment 1, 16 kindergartners were tested on vertical-horizontal and oblique discriminations in symmetrical and asymmetrical alignments. When stimuli were asymmetrically aligned, the oblique discrimination was learned as rapidly as the vertical-horizontal discrimination. While performance on both problems was significantly better in the asymmetrical condition, stimulus alignment exerted its greatest influence on memory for oblique orientations; symmetrically aligned vertical and horizontal lines were easier to discriminate between than symmetrically aligned obliques. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the influence of configurational cues in memory for vertical-horizontal orientations increases when stimulus relationships between orthogonal stimuli are made salient. The 16 kindergartners tested found symmetrically aligned orthogonal lines as difficult to discriminate between as symmetrically aligned obliques, when stimuli were presented in diagonally oriented, rectangular frames. It is suggested that memory for orthogonal lines is more resistant to configurational cues because it typically involves an absolute code, while oblique memory always involves a relative code.