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Deregowski; Muldrow & Muldrow (1972) Pictorial representation in a…
Deregowski; Muldrow & Muldrow (1972) Pictorial representation in a remote Ethiopian population
Aim
To investigate whether the perception of pictures relies on learning.
Key Findings
The results showed that the participants were able to recognise correctly, albeit gradually and with a degree of effort, the clearly depicted animals.
There were some differences observed between the highland and lowland groups, which may have been due to the lowland group’s greater familiarity with some of the animals depicted.
Conclusions
The researchers concluded that perception is mostly based on the perceiver’s past experience or familiarity with an object, animal or
person, and that this skill can be learnt with effort.
Methodology
The participants were presented with three pictures printed in black and white ink on coarse whitish cloth (a material familiar to the community).
The first picture was of a standing buck; the second was of a running leopard; and the last was a hunting scene similar to that used in Hudson’s (1960) pictorial perception test.
Participants were tested individually and shown the pictures in the same order.
As the pictures were presented, participants were asked open-ended interview questions about the pictures, e.g. ‘What do you see?’ All responses were recorded, as well as observations of the participants’ demeanour while answering
Participants
All participants were from the Me’en (Mekan) community living in the Kaffa and Gemagota provinces of Ethiopia.
There were 41 participants — 33 were from the lowland group and the remainder were from the highland group. This is significant as each section of the community had exposure to different animals and different external experiences, such as going to market.
The sample consisted of approximately equal numbers of men, women, boys and girls.
Strengths
Interviews were conducted by an experimenter who was familiar with the area, people and language, and with the help of a local research assistant. This increased the internal validity of the research
Limitations
Experimenters tended to get different responses from the participants depending on whether the cloth was lying flat on the ground (horizontal) or hung up (vertical). This may have been an uncontrolled extraneous variable in the experiment
Some of the participants seemed to experience stressful responses during the experiment. This may have violated ethical principles
The use of pictures in black and white might also have affected participant responses. Some participants had difficulty identifying the tree. Many participants reported seeing a ‘zebra’ in one of the pictures. This may have been an uncontrolled extraneous variable.