The Spatial Coding Strategies of One-Year-Old Infants in a Locomotor Search Task

Bushnell, Emily W.; McKenzie, B. E.; Lawrence, Deborah A.; Connell, Sheryl

doi:10.2307/1131790

Cited by 104 publications

(58 citation statements)

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“…Nevertheless, between 6 and 12 months, infants begin to demonstrate that they are capable of orienting by using visual guidance strategies employing coincident or adjacent visual cues or landmarks (Acredolo, 1978;Acredolo & Evans, 1980;Bremner, 1978a,b;Bushnell, McKenzie, Lawrence, & Connell, 1995;Tyler & McKenzie, 1990). Between 6 and 12 months of age infants also begin showing that they can orient using path integration/dead reckoning (Acredolo, 1978;Acredolo, Adams, & Goodwyn, 1984;Rieser & Heiman, 1982), and, for example, can use closely related landmarks to visually identify a goal location after rotation and translation (Lew, Bremner, & Lefkovitch, 2000).…”

Section: Discussion -Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies have shown that by the second half of the first year (8.5 to 12 months) children are able to use visual guidance strategies (i.e., coincidental landmarks) to identify target locations (Acredolo, 1978;Acredolo & Evans, 1980;Bremner, 1978b;Bushnell et al, 1995;Lew et al, 2000). It was thus surprising that in Experiment 2 (4-location task), some children between 17 and 20 months of age failed to discriminate the reward location even in the presence of the local cue.…”

Section: Comparison With Previous Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Egocentric capacities emerge first in the newborn child, and tend to dominate the child's spatial world for at least the first six months (Acredolo, 1978;Acredolo & Evans, 1980;Bremner, 1978a). The use of cues or landmarks to remember spatial locations begins to appear between 8.5 and 12 months (Acredolo, 1978;Acredolo & Evans, 1980;Bremner, 1978a;Bushnell et al, 1995;Lew et al, 2000). Path integration becomes apparent in children from 6 to 12 months of age (Acredolo, 1978;Bremner, Knowles, & Andreasen, 1994;Rieser & Heiman, 1982).…”

Section: Comparison With Previous Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Development of allocentric spatial memory abilities in children from 18 months to 5 years of age

Ribordy¹,

Jabès²,

Lavenex³

et al. 2013

Cognitive Psychology

147

130

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Episodic memories for autobiographical events that happen in unique spatiotemporal contexts are central to defining who we are. Yet, before 2 years of age, children are unable to form or store episodic memories for recall later in life, a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia. Here, we studied the development of allocentric spatial memory, a fundamental component of episodic memory, in two versions of a real-world memory task requiring 18 month-to 5-year-old children to search for rewards hidden beneath cups distributed in an open-field arena. Whereas children 25-42-months-old were not capable of discriminating three reward locations among 18 possible locations in absence of local cues marking these locations, children older than 43 months found the reward locations reliably. These results support previous findings suggesting that allocentric spatial memory, if present, is only rudimentary in children under 3.5 years of age. However, when tested with only one reward location among four possible locations, children 25-39-months-old found the reward reliably in absence of local cues, whereas 18-23-month-olds did not. Our findings thus show that the ability to form a basic allocentric representation of the environment is present by 2 years of age, and its emergence coincides temporally with the offset of infantile amnesia. However, the ability of children to distinguish and remember closely related spatial locations improves from 2 to 3.5 years of age, a developmental period marked by persistent deficits in long-term episodic E-mail address: pierre.lavenex@unifr.ch (P. Lavenex).memory known as childhood amnesia. These findings support the hypothesis that the differential maturation of distinct hippocampal circuits contributes to the emergence of specific memory processes during early childhood.

show abstract

Section: Discussion -Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Comparison With Previous Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Comparison With Previous Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Development of allocentric spatial memory abilities in children from 18 months to 5 years of age

Ribordy¹,

Jabès²,

Lavenex³

et al. 2013

Cognitive Psychology

147

130

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Given that numerous researchers have observed better search accuracy when object location is coded by more, as opposed to less, distinctive cues (Brenmer, 1978a(Brenmer, , 1978bBushnell, McKenzie, Lawrence, & Connell, 1995;Butterworth et al, 1982;Cornell, 1981), this latter coding will thus produce poorer performance. A different concern with these studies is that the level of overall search accuracy across all experiments was not especially high; the average best case performance in any condition was approximately 67% correct.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of visual and body movement information in infant search.

Schmuckler¹,

Tsang-Tong²

2000

Developmental Psychology

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Three experiments investigated the use of visual input and body movement input arising from movement through the world on spatial orientation. Infants between 9 1/2 and 18 months participated in a search task in which they searched for a toy hidden in 1 of 2 containers. Prior to beginning search, either the infants or the containers were rotated 180 degrees; these rotations occurred in a lit or dark environment. These experiments were distinguished by the environmental cues for object location; Experiment 1 used a position cue, Experiment 2 a color cue, and Experiment 3 both position and color cues. Accuracy was better in Experiments 2 and 3 than in Experiment 1. All studies found that search was best after infant movement in the light; all other conditions led to equivalently worse performance. These results are discussed relative to a theoretical characterization of spatial coding focusing on the uses of spatial information.

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“…Children older than 22 months were more accurate when indirect landmarks were visible, whereas the youngest children performed the same whether the landmarks were visible or not. These data suggested that toward the end of infancy children begin to use indirect landmarks to guide navigation (see also DeLoache and Brown, 1983;Bushnell et al, 1995).…”

Section: How Children Use Objects and Landmarksmentioning

confidence: 95%