The effect of experience on children's ability to show response and place learning

Abstract

From a developmental perspective, it has been reasoned that over the course of development children make differential use of available landmarks in the surroundings to orient in space. The present study examined whether children can learn to apply different spatial strategies, focusing on different landmark cues. Children aged 7 and 10 years were tested on an object-location memory task in which they learned a location relative to a direct cue or to indirect cues. Both age groups performed equally well on the direct test condition. However, children 7 years of age had difficulties with orienting relative to the indirect landmarks. Interestingly, their performance increased significantly with more relevant experience. Different explanations for these findings are discussed.

Annual Research Review: The neurobehavioral development of multiple memory systems – implications for childhood and adolescent psychiatric disorders

“…Other hippocampal‐dependent tasks that have been adapted for children include the Morris water maze and open‐field search tasks. Converging evidence indicates that children can learn these maze paradigms by about the age of 7 years, and they become progressively more adept at solving the tasks through the age of 12 years, whereas when cues signal the correct responses (and thus putatively engage striatal‐dependent habit learning), children of all ages tested display adult‐like performance (Overman, Pate et al., ; Lehnung et al, ; Leplow et al., ; Mandolesi et al., ; Bullens, Székely, Vedder, & Postma, ; Townsend, Richmond, Vogel‐Farley, & Thomas, ). These results suggest that the ability to use a striatal‐dependent stimulus‐response strategy is present much earlier than the ability to use a hippocampal‐dependent spatial strategy.…”

The role of local and distal landmarks in the development of object location memory.

“…Children 5, 7, and 9 years of age were tested on an object location memory task in which, between presentation and test, the availability of local cues and distal cues were manipulated and/or participants' viewpoint was changed. We expected a general age effect with older children (9-year-olds) being more precise in their estimations than younger children (5-year-olds; Bullens, Székely, Vedder, & Postma, 2010; Nardini, Burgess, Breckenridge, & Atkinson, 2006) and 7-year-olds performing somewhere in between. Yet, on the basis of earlier findings in this field (Bullens et al, 2010), we also tested whether the difference in performance between 5- and 7-year-olds was greater than the difference between 7- and 9-year-olds.…”

A Mediation Model Linking Body Weight, Cognition, and Sleep-Disordered Breathing

“…These stages do not necessarily develop in synchrony and are considered to reflect the interplay of nature and nurture. Chronological age played a substantial role toward each of the measures of interest in all models, as well as an intriguing residual variance association of spatial abilities and age, suggesting that the nature of the tests used (53), or lower socioeconomic status (54), unfamiliarity (55), and other factors may account for this finding. Namely, spatial processing skills are an important component in learning and thus in cognitive development.…”