Navigation and the developing brain

Abstract

As babies rapidly acquire motor skills that give them increasingly independent and wide-ranging access to the environment over the first two years of human life, they decrease their reliance on habit systems for spatial localization, switching to their emerging inertial navigation system and to allocentric frameworks. Initial place learning is evident towards the end of the period. From 3 to 10 years, children calibrate their ability to encode various sources of spatial information (inertial information, geometric cues, beacons, proximal landmarks and distal landmarks) and begin to combine cues, both within and across systems. Geometric cues are important, but do not constitute an innate and encapsulated module. In addition, from 3 to 10 years, children build the capacity to think about frames of reference different from their current one (i.e. to perform perspective taking). By around 12 years, we see adult-level performance and adult patterns of individual differences on cognitive mapping tasks requiring the integration of vista views of space into environmental space. These lines of development are continuous rather than stage-like. Spatial development builds on important beginnings in the neural systems of newborns, but changes in experience-expectant ways with motor development, action in the world and success-failure feedback. Human systems for integrating and manipulating spatial information also benefit from symbolic capacities and technological inventions.

Sun, age and test location affect spatial orientation in human foragers in rainforests

“…Previous studies suggested that 3-10-year-old children develop their ability to combine both egocentric and geocentric ways of spatial coding, and show adult-level performance in cognitive map tasks around the age of 12 years [15]. Our findings suggest that the young Mbendjele children at around six years performed as accurately as adults in the pointing tests when they were close to the camp.…”

“…Researchers have investigated spatial orientation abilities of humans by using a wide variety of methods, also in comparison with non-human animal species including great apes [2,12]. Many behaviour and neuroscience studies have focused on identifying whether humans use topological versus Euclidean knowledge and egocentric versus geocentric ways of spatial coding [13][14][15]. However, how these different types of spatial knowledge and spatial coding are used for orientation by humans in real foraging contexts is not well understood yet.…”

Cross-Domain Associations Between Motor Ability, Independent Exploration, and Large-Scale Spatial Navigation; Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Williams Syndrome, and Typical Development

“…This is the first study to determine whether the known association between motor and large-scale spatial ability in infancy (see Newcombe, 2019 for a review) extends to childhood and to atypical groups. If motor competence is related to spatial ability, we predict an association between motor ability and spatial ability across all participant groups.…”

Improving cognitive mapping by training for people with a poor sense of direction

“…Moreover, direction errors on largescale test routes and small-scale training paths were different in size. Mean direction errors are more than twice larger on the environmental test routes (39.57°) than on the training paths (around 15°for pathway completion and north-pointing), suggesting the significance of spatial scale on spatial cognition (Learmonth, Nadel, & Newcombe, 2002;Newcombe, 2019; to be discussed in more detail below).…”

“…A meta-analysis conducted by Uttal et al ( 2013 ) shows that training in spatial ability is effective, and that the effect of training is transferrable. However, the issue of trainability has scarcely been studied with respect to cognitive mapping, a major type of spatial thinking that has significance in people’s everyday lives (McKinlay, 2016 ; National Research Council, 2006 ; Newcombe, 2010 , 2019 ).…”