Core Knowledge and the Emergence of Symbols: The Case of Maps

Abstract

Map reading is unique to humans but present in people of diverse cultures, at ages as young as 4 years. Here we explore the nature and sources of this ability, asking both what geometric information young children use in maps and what non-symbolic systems are associated with their map-reading performance. Four-year-old children were given two tests of map-based navigation (placing an object within a small 3D surface layout at a position indicated on a 2D map), one focused on distance relations and the other on angle relations. Children also were given two non-symbolic tasks, testing their use of geometry for navigation (a reorientation task) and for visual form analysis (a deviant-detection task). Although children successfully performed both map tasks, their performance on the two map tasks was uncorrelated, providing evidence for distinct abilities to represent distance and angle on 2D maps of 3D surface layouts. In contrast, performance on each map task was associated with performance on one of the two non-symbolic tasks: map-based navigation by distance correlated with sensitivity to the shape of the environment in the reorientation task, whereas map-based navigation by angle correlated with sensitivity to the shapes of 2D forms and patterns in the deviant detection task. These findings suggest links between one uniquely human, emerging symbolic ability, geometric map use, and two core systems of geometry.

Core geometry in perspective

“…These results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that pictures facilitate representations of scenes and objects that rely equally on extended surface and landmark shape information. Instead, they are consistent with past findings that young children rely selectively on different geometric information when using overhead maps to find targets located either at the midpoint of extended surfaces in the environment or at landmarks in that environment (Huang & Spelke, ).…”

“…Both Huang and Spelke () and Dillon et al . () adopted an individual differences approach to probe the relationships between children's sensitivity to distance and angle when they navigate, recognize objects, and interpret spatial symbols.…”

“…Experiment 1 also sought to replicate, in children, findings with adults and infants (Biederman & Ju, ; DeLoache, Strauss & Maynard, ; Shinskey & Jachens, ; Walther, Chai, Caddigan, Beck & Fei‐Fei, ) that the addition of color and texture information in full‐color photographs offers no significant advantage over pictures that more simply capture the occluding edges that are essential to spatial vision (Sayim & Cavanagh, ; von der Heydt, Peterhans & Baumgartner, ). Experiments 2 and 3 used an individual differences approach (after Huang & Spelke, ; Dillon et al ., ) to probe the relationships between children's sensitivity to geometry when they interpret symbolic line drawings and when they navigate or recognize objects without spatial symbols. Because of the greater familiarity of perspectival views of scenes and objects, children might engage geometric information in a more integrated fashion when interpreting line drawings than when interpreting overhead maps.…”

Navigation by environmental geometry: The use of zebrafish as a model

“…Moreover, disoriented children also fail to encode angle relationships between surfaces, and they encode distance relationships between wall-like surfaces but not between freestanding objects or fragmented corners (Gouteux and Spelke, 2001;Lee and Spelke, 2008;Lee and Spelke, 2010;Lee and Spelke, 2011;Lee et al, 2012a). Importantly, children use these geometric properties not only to solve the navigation problems faced by other animals, but also to solve the uniquely human problem of navigating by a map (Huang and Spelke, 2013).…”

Core foundations of abstract geometry

“…Previous research by Huang and Spelke (25) showed that children's use of distance in a nonsymbolic navigation task correlated with their use of a map to locate targets at the surface midpoints of a continuous triangular environment. Moreover, children's use of angle and relative length in a nonsymbolic shape recognition task correlated with their use of a map to locate targets at the corners of the same triangular environment.…”