2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Life span development study on spatial perspective-taking with response time as an index
Project/Area Number |
14510136
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Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
Section | 一般 |
Research Field |
教育・社会系心理学
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Research Institution | Shiga University |
Principal Investigator |
WATANABE Masayuki SHIGA University, Faculty of Education, Assistant professor, 教育学部, 助教授 (40201230)
|
Project Period (FY) |
2002 – 2004
|
Keywords | spatial perspective-taking / elderly people / life span development / response time |
Research Abstract |
Spatial perspective-taking is a form of virtual-body movement in three-dimensional space. A new task for measuring this separately from other information-processing was devised and the life span development of virtual-body movement was evaluated. Participants were children, university students and elderly people who were asked to take-in the perspectives of eight points starting from their front, and subsequently at every 45 degrees. The gradient of the regression line of the relationship between the distance from the participants to the points for which perspectives were to be taken, and the average response time, did not differ with the age. Furthermore, the percentage of the reverse error ratio, which shows the inadequateness of virtual-body movement, to the total number of errors, was high in the order of children>university students>elderly. These results indicate that virtual-body movement ability is retained in the elderly. This finding contradicts the conventional wisdom that spatial perspective-taking ability declines in late life. The significance of these findings is discussed with reference to imaging and brain research.
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