An experimental study on the certain effects of colors on the perception of preschool and primary school children - implications to design

Abstract

The adult ergonomic design principles usually do not apply to children, because their needs, skills, and expectations differ. The purpose of this study is to explore preschoolers' and primary schoolers' color perception and memorization in the context of spatial orientation, in order to explore possibilities of implementation of colors in the design of the school interior. Our experiment involved 80 participants. This study mainly recruited children aged 5 - 9 years as research participants. After the investigation, we found that: (1) Children showed the highest accuracy in memorizing the yellow object (87.5 %), while they had demonstrated the lowest percentage of correct answers when memorizing the blue object (73.8 %); (2) Boys showed a higher accuracy in the perception of colored objects, compared to girls, for all four used colors; (3) Older children (third grade) showed better accuracy in memorizing the targeted properties of used test object of different colors (for all used colors) than younger children. These findings are considered in the context of the design of school equipment and surrounding.