Perception
Do kids who judge 'straight up' better do better at school?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Children who were more accurate at lining a rod up with true vertical despite a tilted frame scored higher on national school tests, especially maths, even after accounting for family background, sex, fitness and activity.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Cross-sectional analysis within the Australian LOOK cohort: children did a small-visual-angle computerised rod-and-frame test, a shuttle-run fitness test and a week of pedometer wear; hierarchical regressions and top-versus-bottom quartile comparisons related these to national (NAPLAN) test scores.
- N
- N=341 · 341 children completed all measures (regressions used 341 to 346 depending on the outcome), drawn from 853 children in the LOOK study; quartile comparisons report larger group sizes than a quartile of 341 would give, which the text does not explain.
- Population
- Year 5 schoolchildren (about 10-11 years old) from 29 public primary schools in Canberra, Australia
- Outcome
- NAPLAN numeracy, reading, writing and summed academic scores, related to rod-and-frame error, cardiorespiratory fitness, pedometer activity, parental education and sex
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Key findings
Rod-and-frame error correlated negatively with all school scores, most strongly with numeracy (r = -0.35). Added last in regression models, it explained 8.4% of the variance in overall academic scores and 7.9% in numeracy, and its weight was larger than that of parental education for overall scores. Children in the most accurate quartile (field independent) outscored the least accurate quartile, with a large difference for numeracy (d = 0.82). Fitness and activity showed only small links with academic scores and no significant correlation with rod-and-frame error.
Methodology
Children in a Canberra school cohort looked down a dark viewing tube at a screen showing a tilted frame and rod and used a mouse to set the rod upright over ten trials; their average error measured how much the frame pulled their judgement (field dependence). The screen subtended a small visual angle of about 20 degrees to limit input from the body's balance senses. Researchers also measured fitness with a shuttle run, activity with pedometers and family background with parental education, and related all of these to the children's national literacy and numeracy test results.
Limitations
The design is cross-sectional, so it cannot show that better vertical perception causes better academic performance; a shared factor such as attention or general intelligence could drive both, and no IQ or attention measure was included. The rod-and-frame test was done about 4 months before the academic tests, the pedometers captured only broad step counts, and the authors note instructions to children may have affected results. Reporting is uneven: children are described as ten years old although the cohort mean age was 11.3, and the quartile group sizes quoted do not match a quartile split of the analysed sample.
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