Spatial World Flashcards
Spatial development
Intraobject (or intrinsic) representations
- Mental rotation
- Perspective taking
Interobject (or external) representations
- Spatial reorientation
- Navigation/wayfinding
Feature also more likely to be used when:
- children can move around freely
- Features can be used at greater distances
- e.g. shape, distance and inter-relationships need to be coded.
Natural geometry perspective
Geometry is important for almost anything
Geometry is founded on two core systems:
-Large scale layouts – town centre
-Small scale objects – Patterns/ shapes
Children reorient by geometry of a room, and by distance and direction, not length and angle
Evidence for Natural Geometry
Hermer and Spelke, 1994, 1996
- Subjects saw an object being hidden in a room and then were disorientated..
- Uni students were tested in an all-white room and in a room with one blue wall, used the non-geometic landmarks (Colours). In the white room subjects exclusively searched the two geometrically appropriate corners.
- Children ages 18-24mnths completed the same task. In the white room they searched geometrically appropriate corners like the adults, however in the blue wall room they continued to use the same research pattern.
- Young children oriented themselves by analysing the shape of the environment and fail to orientate themselves according with non-geometric landmarks which could improve performance.
- They proposed a biologically driven “Geometric module” for reorientation. So that data supports the theory in that it shows that geometry information is prioritised by children
Huttenlocher, Newcombe and Sandberg, 1994
-Examined whether very young children, like adults can locate objects in a sandbox, estimating by eye the location within a frame of reference. Children 16-24 months are able to use distance to code the location of an object hidden in a large sandbox. Basic mechanisms for locating objects in space are available at an early age – possibly innately.
Lee, Sovrano, and Spelke, 2012)
-Explores two-year-old children’s sensitivity to angle, length, distance and direction. Children reoriented themselves with surface distances and directions, but they not lengths or corner angles either for directional reorientation or as local landmarks.
Bayesian approach: integration of multiple inputs
Features (e.g. landmarks) and geometry are individually selected or integrated.
This is incompatible with ‘modularity’ view.
Geometry does not coherently describe performance on navigation tasks.
The weightings of features and geometry depend on
o Salience
o Variability
Approach is related to: constructivism, theory theory.
Prior beliefs are important in performance
Evidence for Bayesian approach
- Sandpit (Huttenlocher, Newcobe and Sangberg, 1994)
- Room size
Huttenlocher, Newcombe and Sandberg, 1994
- Found that children 16-24 months use distance to code location - Innate
- In another experiment it was examined if children could code location in a bounded space, as part of being within a larger segment. The sandbox was subdivided by 10 year olds but not 4 or 6year olds.
- Experience allows you to improve over time
- Even older children (10 year olds) and adults subdivide the sandbox to improve their accuracy
Inconsistencies due to room size? Reduce artificial environment by making it bigger
- Hermer and Spelke (1994, 1996) used a very small room and Children 3, 4, and 5 years of age do not use a coloured wall to navigate, 6 year old do. So that data supports the theory in that it shows that geometry information is prioritised by young children
- In a larger, 8 x 12 ft room, 18-24 month old children can use non-geometrical to reorient (Learmonth et al. (2001)
Evidence for Bayesian approach
Cheng & Newcombe, 2005
Toddlers
Square room (Nardini, Atkinson & Burgess, 2008)
Cheng & Newcombe (2005) - use of geometric cues fluctuates across studies, the use of non-geometric cues increases with age, with both small and large spaces
Toddlers use some kinds of non-geometrical cues and can disambiguate locations by using landmark information (o Huttenlocher & Lurenco, 2007; o Learmonth, Nadel & Newcome, 2002)
Nardini, Atkinson & Burgess, 2008
- In a square room (no geometric info, walls are all same length) 18-24 year olds use colour distinctions that they ignore in rectangular rooms. They can use non-geometric cues to reorientate.
- geometric information is available it is preferred which indicates an innate origin as adults do not show this preference?
Other approaches to spatial research
Navigation in the ‘real’ world
Wayfinding is the ‘ability to learn and remember a route through an environment’ (Blades, 1997).
Some groups of individuals have regular navigational problems (e.g. young children)
How is navigation studied?
Independent variables: environment, training
Dependent variables: errors, looking time, number of learning trials
Latent Learning
How do we learn maps?
- non-rewarded trials animals had been learning much more than they had exhibited. This learning, which did not manifest itself until after the food had been introduced, called “latent learning.” (Berkeley, 1929)
- Once they knew the would get food - they showed that they had learnt the maze in the non reward conditions. They had been building up a ‘map,’ and could utilise the latter as soon as they were motivated to do so
Rats with experience of the maze learned faster once reward was introduced (on day 11) than rats with no prior experience of the maze Seems then that latent learning about environment is taking place without reinforcement Even in rats some learning is insight based rather than shaped (Tolman and Honzik, 1948)
Development of navigation
Siegel and White, 1975
In their framework, internal representations of spatial knowledge of a new place progress over time from an initial stage of landmark knowledge to a stage of route knowledge to an ultimate stage of survey knowledge.
Landmark knowledgeis knowledge about the identities of discrete objects or scenes that are salient and recognizable in the environment.
Route knowledgeconsists of sequences of landmarks and associated decisions
survey knowledge.This is a two-dimensional and “map-like,” quantitatively scaled representation of the layout of the environment. Survey knowledge represents distance and directional relationships among landmarks, including those between which direct travel has never occurred.
Development of navigation
(Siegel and White, 1975)
Evaluation
Evans et al. (1981)
+ Landmarks appear to be used as initial anchor points in the environment with path structures elaborated subsequently within the initial landmark network. Memory for exact object location in the environed improves with experience
Montello (1998)
- minimal exposure to a new environment (on the order of seconds or minutes), people can perform tasks that require some knowledgeat a level at least better than chance—tasks such as taking shortcuts. Such tasks require that people understand quantitative distances and directions between places, which should not be possible to do by people without accumulated experience.
Ishikawa and Montello (2005)
- longitudinal studywas conducted. Twenty-four college students were individually driven along two routes in a previously unfamiliar neighborhoods over 10 weekly sessions.
- Starting Session 4, they were also driven along a short connecting route. After each session, participants estimated spatial properties of the routes.
- Most participants had accurate metric knowledge from the first session or never acquired accurate metric knowledge - Acqusition of spatial development does not proceed in the proposed way.
Training children to improve Wayfinding in a Virtual environment
Lingwood et al. (2015)
- IV: No landmarks, Landmarks, Verbally labeled LM
Participants
were shown a route in a virtual environment, and asked to retrace, 6-year olds made fewer errors and required fewer learning trials when landmarks were labelled
Children were much poorer when there were no
landmarks. This is the first study to distinguish between route learning dependent on landmarks, and
route learning without landmarks (i.e. dependent on directions)
Issues with using virtual environments
- High level of control when manipulating variables but the issue is now ecological validity – how realistic are they?
- Measurement issue: Is it ‘independent wayfinding’?
- Virtual environments tap into the SOME similar cognitive processes as real world environments
Real environments
Cornell et al. (1989, 1992)
6- year olds benefited from paying attention to proximal landmarks ONLY
12-year olds and adults benefitted from: paying attention to proximal and distal landmarks (Can see from great distance) , or using a look back strategy
Ethical issue e.g. fatigue, getting lost
Measurement issue: Is it ‘independent wayfinding’?
Low level of control
