Complex patterns for kindergartners

Knowing what kinds of patterns are easy for children to recognize early in their kindergarten year, and what kinds are difficult, can be a useful guide for patterning instruction. Hence, the ability of children to recognize complex patterns early in their kindergarten year was assessed in two experiments. One experiment showed that the children were significantly less accurate on patterns made of progressively higher numbers or of letters that came progressively later in the alphabet than on patterns made of clock faces that showed increasing amounts of time or were made of rotating objects. There was an interaction between the type of element of which the pattern was composed and the pattern’s orientation. A second experiment showed that symmetric patterns were easier than growing patterns, and there were effects of orientation and the elements of which a pattern was composed, as well as interactions. This research indicates that instruction on clock faces and rotating objects should precede instruction on letters and numbers, and that symmetric patterns can also be easily understood.