Analysis of Difficulty and Task Performance Strategies on Seriation Tasks by Children With Blindness: Using Cup-Stacking Tasks Relying on Haptics

Abstract

Seriation tasks promote the development of key concepts that form the basis for understanding numbers. However, seriation tasks, such as comparing sticks, differ greatly from visual tasks in which the whole is grasped at a glance, and from tactile-motor tasks in which the whole is perceived successively. For the present study, seriation tasks were created that used cup-stacking tasks in which the correctness of the order was fed back by stacking. The purpose was to examine the difficulty of cup-stacking tasks and to analyze task execution strategies. The analysis was conducted in terms of (a) the difficulty of the cup-stacking tasks, (b) factors affecting the difficulty, and (c) strategies in comparison with Piaget’s developmental stage of seriation. The results suggested that five cups were more difficult to stack than three cups, that presenting all the cups at the same time was more difficult than handing them to the participants one by one, and that it is necessary to consider the presentation method depending on the number of cups. In addition, the present analysis of the development of seriation in children with blindness using the cup-stacking task followed the same sequence as Piaget’s developmental stage. The findings of the present study may be applicable to the teaching and evaluation of seriation in children with blindness.