Perceptual Foundations of Euclidean Geometry

Accueil Parcourir Services Documentation HAL Poster De Conférence Année : 2019 Perceptual Foundations of Euclidean Geometry Véronique Izard (1, 2) , Pierre Pica (3, 4) , Elizabeth Spelke (1, 5) 1 Departement of Psychology 2 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 3 SFL - Structures Formelles du Langage 4 ICE - Instituto do Cérebro, UFRN, Natal 5 Harvard University Résumé Euclidean geometry defines objects that can be realized in space, and may therefore be founded in spatial perception. We investigated whether the perception of small, 2-dimen- sional visual forms could provide cognitive foundations for Euclidean knowledge, by asking two questions. First, are humans sensitive to form variations that are relevant to Eu- clidean geometry (e.g. changes in angle)? Second, can ob- servers easily disregard variations that are irrelevant to Eu- clidean geometry (e.g., changes in scale)? Participants from the U.S. (age 3-34 years) and from the Amazon (age 5-67) were asked to locate deviants in panels of 6 forms of vari- able orientation. Results indicate that perception of forms aligns with a restricted version of Euclidean geometry, where forms are defined in terms of metric proportions and global size, but mirror images are assimilated. Moreo- ver, children below 6 did not clearly analyze forms in terms of the shape property of angle.