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Studies in the Mentality of Literates: 1. Conceptual Structure and Aspects of Visual Perception

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Abstract

We studied visual-perceptual abilities of individuals with different levels of education (including adult illiterates) in Brazil (N = 136) and in Estonia (N = 560) with person-oriented methods of data analysis. Our aim was to discover whether dominant type of word meaning structure (WMS) can define the “Great Divide”, the single breaking point that universally defines certain direction of subsequent to it cultural evolution. We particularly focused on the everyday concept-logical concept shift that takes place in the formal education system. We found that logical concepts were rarely available for illiterates; availability of logical conceptual thought increases together with the level of education. Most illiterates were able to find figures of concrete objects from complex overlapping and embedded contour figures but none of them could find all abstract figures from the same complex figures. Also none of the illiterates could perform beyond chance level in both mental rotation tasks together. Ability to perform correctly on all visual-spatial tasks increased with the increase in logical concepts and with the increasing level of education. The distribution of respondents according to the WMS level, level of education, and performance on the visual-spatial tasks indicated that individuals are developmentally heterogeneous: achievement of the tertiary level of education and logical conceptual thinking mechanisms does not guarantee high level performance on the visual-spatial tasks. The results are in agreement with the theory of unilineal hierarchic cultural evolution. Individual psychic development and cultural evolution can be both understood in terms of the WMS development.

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Notes

  1. “Rarely if ever” would deserve a longer theoretical discussion. Shortly, there are different possibilities why individuals with no formal education still occasionally can give answers that must be coded as logical. First, individuals may have had experiences outside formal education system that supported development of some logical concepts – as there is no biological reason why this type of concepts did not develop in this group. Second, the answers can be essentially pseudoconcepts: for instance just verbal superficial associations with no hierarchical language structure behind the answer. And third, some superficially logical concept type answers can be based on everyday experiences. For instance to say that “bed” and “chair” go together because they are “furniture” may come from visiting shops that are called furniture (shops). Thus, in that case, the answer could emerge from the reasoning – “bed and chair go together because both are sold at the shop called furniture”. That justification would be an example of everyday conceptual thought. Our resources did not allow to conduct a study where all such relevant issues could have been discussed with the participants in sufficient details.

  2. The probability to answer correctly 3 or more times out of four by chance would be 0.108 and 0.313 for the MRCC and MRHT, respectively.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all participants who contributed their time and effort for this study. We thank Cristina Ceciarelli and Boipeba community for help in organizing the study.

Funding

Writing of this work was supported by the Tallinn University School of Educational Sciences Grant Study of novel aspects of the state and development of speech function and by the Estonian Research Council Grant No IUT03–03 (Academic and personal development of an individual in the system of formal education) to Aaro Toomela.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Narva Rd 29, 10120, Tallinn, Estonia

    Aaro Toomela & Soraya Jesus Salomão

  2. Federal University of Sergipe, São Cristóvão, Brazil

    Delma Barros Filho

  3. Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

    Ana Cecília S. Bastos, Antonio Marcos Chaves & Marilena Ristum

  4. State University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

    Sara Santos Chaves

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  1. Aaro Toomela
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Toomela, A., Filho, D.B., Bastos, A.C.S. et al. Studies in the Mentality of Literates: 1. Conceptual Structure and Aspects of Visual Perception. Integr. psych. behav. 54, 465–493 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-019-09511-5

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