Children’s reasoning about spatial relational similarity: The effect of alignment and relational complexity

Abstract

a b s t r a c tWe investigated 4-and 5-year-old children's mapping strategies in a spatial task. Children were required to find a picture in an array of three identical cups after observing another picture being hidden in another array of three cups. The arrays were either aligned one behind the other in two rows or placed side by side forming one line. Moreover, children were rewarded for two different mapping strategies. Half of the children needed to choose a cup that held the same relative position as the rewarded cup in the other array; they needed to map left-left, middle-middle, and rightright cups together (aligned mapping), which required encoding and mapping of two relations (e.g., the cup left of the middle cup and left of the right cup). The other half needed to map together the cups that held the same relation to the table's spatial features-the cups at the edges, the middle cups, and the cups in the middle of the table (landmark mapping)-which required encoding and mapping of one relation (e.g., the cup at the table's edge). Results showed that children's success was constellation dependent; performance was higher when the arrays were aligned one behind the other in two rows than when they were placed side by side. Furthermore, children showed a preference for landmark mapping over aligned mapping.

Planning Following Stroke: A Relational Complexity Approach Using the Tower of London

“…The research also has practical implications. To the extent that planning on tower tasks can be construed as relational processing, interventions designed to improve relational processing through for example, structural alignment training (Son et al, 2011 ; Hribar et al, 2012 ), use of relational language (Gentner et al, 2011 ), and techniques to improve access to relational components (e.g., Andrews et al, 2012 ) might also have beneficial effects on planning. Thus the findings have the potential to inform cognitive rehabilitation of planning deficits following brain injury due to stroke and other factors.…”

Spatial alignment facilitates visual comparison.

“…Though some research has explored how spatial alignment of visuals affects comparison (e.g., Hribar, Haun, & Call, 2012; Larsen & Bundesen, 1998; Paik & Mix, 2008), we know of no work that systematically manipulates both the axis and placement of visuals to examine the impact of spatial alignment on visual comparison. To our knowledge, the current research is the first systematic investigation of spatial alignment.…”

Spatial alignment supports comparison of life science images.

“…In other cases, spatial arrangement is incidental (e.g., an array of animals showcasing variability in a trait, arranged in no particular order). Regardless, the spatial organization of the items affects the alignment process (Hribar et al, 2012; Kurtz & Gentner, 2013; Matlen et al, 2020; Paik & Mix, 2008; Sagi et al, 2012).…”