Spatial memory and monitoring of hidden items through spatial displacements by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

This study examined chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) short-term memory for food location in near space. In Experiments 1 and 2, either 1 or 2 items (chocolate pieces) were hidden in an array of 3 or 5 containers that either remained stationary or were rotated 180 degrees or 360 degrees. When the array remained stationary, the chimpanzees remembered both item locations. When arrays were rotated, however, chimpanzees found only 1 item. In Experiment 3, 2 items were hidden in an array of 7 cups. Both items were found at levels significantly better than chance. Ninety percent of errors were made after the 1st item was found, and errors reflected memory failure rather than a failure of inhibitory control.     

Analysis of the development of children's spatial reference systems

Four, six, and ten-year-old children were required to copy an object's location and orientation within a two-dimensional spatial layout under two conditions: when both E's standard board and that of the S's were in the same orientation and when they were rotated 180 ° from each other. The failure of the 4-yr-olds to copy location and orientation under both conditions even when space was topographically coded indicates that at this age the child does not conceptualize space within two dimensions. Although the errors of the 4-yr-olds tended to be of a self-reference nature with respect to orientation and location on rotation trials the axes of the self-reference system were not coordinated. Six and 10-yr-old children performed significantly better on both conditions, with the exceptions that the 6-yr-olds continued to preserve some orientations within a self-reference system. When topographical codes were removed and S imagined rotation there were no significant age differences in total errors; however, older children organized entire subspaces within a self-reference system. The findings support Piaget and Inhelder's hypothesis that two-dimensional reference systems do not develop until the period of concrete operational thought, and they also indicate that even at age 10, the self-reference system continues to function when topographical codes are absent. Several cognitive mechanisms proposed to account for the development of spatial abilities are critically discussed.     

The development of spatial understanding in infancy

This paper examines the development of spatial understanding between 8 and 24 months. In particular, it examines whether young infants code changes in the position of an object or themselves in geographic or egocentric terms. The infants sat in a baby chair which was attached to a circular table in such a way that either the infant could be rotated around the edge of the table or the table-top itself could be rotated. Rotation of infant or table could be performed independently or simultaneously. Infants were shown an object which was then hidden under one of either two or three identical cups sitting on the table. Before the infant was allowed to search for the toy, either the table, the infant, or both were rotated, a procedure which resulted in an invisible displacement of the object in terms of geographical and/or egocentric spatial position. Rotations of 60, 90, 120, and 180° were used. Three groups of infants were tested, one cross-sectional (12–24 months), one longitudinal (12–24 months), and one consisting of a group of infants already known to be accelerated in object concept development (8–20 months). The cross-sectional results indicated that egocentric responding continues well into the second half of the second year of life. Even with fortnightly exposure to the tasks, egocentric responding was still evident in some longitudinal babies as late as 19 months. The results of the accelerated group suggest that acceleration through the sequence of object concept development facilitates development of spatial understanding in a wider sense, that is, in the sense of understanding the interrelation of positions in space. The implications of these results for competing theories of the source of object concept errors are discussed.     

Development of spatial memory and spatial orientation in preschoolers and primary school children

The present study addresses the question of what kind of information children use when orientating in new environments, if given proximal and distal landmarks, and how spatial memory develops in the investigated age groups. Ten 5-year-old, ten 7-year-old and ten 10-year-old children were presented with the ‘Kiel Locomotor Maze’, containing features of the Radial Arm Maze and the Morris Water Maze, in order to assess spatial memory and orientation. Children had to learn to approach baited locations only. Task difficulty was equated with respect to the children's age. Training was given until the children reached criterion. During testing, the maze configuration and response requirements were systematically altered, including response rotation, cue rotation, cue deletion and response rotation with cue deletion in order to assess the spatial strategies used by the children. During training and testing, working-memory errors (WM), reference-memory errors (RM) and working-reference memory errors (WR) were recorded. As expected, no difference between age groups appeared during training, thus confirming comparable task difficulty across age groups. During testing, age groups differed significantly with regard to the orientation strategy used. The 5-year-olds were bound to a cue strategy, orientating towards local, proximal cues. The 10-year-olds mastered all tasks, thus displaying a place strategy, being able to use distal cues for orientation, and were even able to do so after being rotated 180°. The 7-year-olds proved to be at an age of transition: five of them were bound to a cue strategy, five children were able to adopt a place strategy. The differences in the orientation strategies used by children of different age groups was reflected by the sum of errors they made, also by RM. WM were found to be rare, especially in older children. We conclude that preschoolers use a cue strategy, that the development of place strategies occurs during primary school age and seems to be complete by the age of 10 years.     

Spatial egocentrism and the effect of an alternate frame of reference

The present study contrasted two possible explanations of spatial egocentrism in spatial perspective tasks. By one account children's judgments in perspectivetaking tasks are based on relations between the self (ego) and the target array. By the second account, children's judgments are based on relations between the target array and the larger spatial field. Sixty children in first, third, and fifth grades (ages 7, 9, and 11 years, respectively) solved both a standard and a modified version of a spatial perspective task. In the modified procedure, subjects observed a model of the experimental room that was rotated to appear as the actual room would appear to a hypothetical viewer. Using the model as an alternative frame of reference improved the performance of subjects in all age groups. In the standard procedure most errors were egocentric. In the modified procedure, subjects showed no systematic egocentric errors for rotations of 90 or 270°. The results supported the hypothesis that systematic egocentric errors are due to subjects realistically maintaining the relation of the array to the immediate spatial field, rather than maintaining the ego-array relation.     

Spatial perspective taking in young children.

Four- and five-year-old children were tested in a spatial perspective task employing a production format. They were shown a photograph of an aspect of a doll house and asked to generate the view on the photograph for a puppet that served as the observer. The house was mounted on a lazy Susan and could be rotated freely by the children. Puppet line of regard (to a corner, side, or rear of the house) and photograph type (fron, corner, side, or rear) constituted within-subject factors. Puppet position, photograph type, and age affected patterns of errors and proportion of correct responses. It was concluded that perspective taking is highly task dependent as well as dependent upon developmental status.     

自我旋转面孔识别的ERPs研究

本研究采用事件相关电位技术考察平面旋转角度对自我面孔识别影响的时间进程。实验采用面孔异同匹配范式(same-different judgment), 首先呈现一张正立的自我或他人内特征的探测面孔, 然后再呈现一张旋转至某个角度(0°、90°、180°)的自我或他人的目标面孔, 要求被试判断两张面孔是否属于同一个人, 并记录其判断的反应时和ERP成分。实验发现, 在N170 (180~240 ms)和N2 (240~300 ms)成分上, 旋转至90°、180°的面孔刺激比正立条件下的面孔刺激分别在枕颞叶和额区诱发了更大的平均波幅。在LPP (400~500 ms)成分上, 对于自我面孔, 正立条件、旋转至90°、旋转至180°所诱发的波幅差异显著。而对于他人面孔, 3个角度所诱发的波幅无显著差异。结果表明, 面孔识别早期阶段是自动化的结构编码, 旋转角度增加了面孔结构编码的难度; 在面孔识别晚期阶段, 大脑对面孔的特异性信息进行精细加工, 自我面孔会占用个体有限认知资源进行下一步精细的心理旋转加工, 因此平面旋转角度会调节晚期个体对自我面孔的加工过程, 并且其影响时间约为100 ms。     

The development of 3- to 6-year-olds' map using ability: the relative importance of landmarks and map alignment

Previous research (e.g., Bluestein & Acredolo, 1979) has demonstrated that children as young as 3 or 4 years of age can use simple maps, if the maps are aligned, and has suggested that when such young children use a map, they rely on the information provided about landmarks. The support for this suggestion, however, comes from research with older children. Our experiment was designed to find out how 3- to 6-year-olds used a map and whether they could use maps that were not aligned. The children were asked to find a hidden toy in a mapped layout that showed the toy's position and included a single landmark. The maps were either aligned or rotated 90 degrees, 180 degrees, or 270 degrees relative to the layout. The results showed that young children could use the maps, even when they were not aligned with the layout, and that they relied on landmark information to do so.     

Difficulties in the control of irrelevant visuospatial information in children with visuospatial learning disabilities

This research tested the hypothesis that children's difficulties in visuospatial working memory (VSWM) may mirror difficulties found with verbal working memory tasks in other categories of children. Two experiments compared the number of correct responses and errors in groups of visuospatial learning disabled children (VSLD) and Controls who were engaged in an active task testing visuospatial working memory. Children were presented with sequences of positions on a 4x4 matrix and were subsequently asked to remember only the last position of each series. In the first Experiment, VSLD children showed greater difficulty in both recalling the last positions and avoiding the irrelevant non-final positions compared with Controls. In the second experiment children of different age groups (second-graders and fifth-graders) were also required to stress, by tapping on the table, the irrelevant positions whenever the experimenter pointed to a coloured cell. Results showed that the number of errors was greater in the VSLD children, and the pattern of errors differed with their grade. In particular, the increased activation of stressed locations produced an increase of correct responses, and a decrease of intrusion errors, except in the case of VSLD second-graders, who made a higher number of intrusions for stressed than for unstressed locations. Results confirm that children with VSLD show a specific deficit in active VSWM, and in particular, in the ability to avoid intrusion errors. In general, the control of irrelevant information appears critical for a successful use of VSWM.     

The effect of pre-movement delays on pointing accuracy in middle childhood.

In adults, the introduction of a pre-response delay has been shown to affect accuracy in pointing tasks while leaving accuracy in perceptual matching tasks unaffected. Here, we report on the effect of pre-movement delays on pointing accuracy in 6-10-year-old children. Children of this age group are of particular interest as their reliance on visual cues to monitor and correct their reaches appears to change during this period of development. Nineteen children were asked to point to the location of a target light after a delay of 0, 1, 2, or 4 s following target extinction. Performance was measured in two conditions: (i) open-loop, where the child reproduced the target locations in complete darkness, and (ii) with visual feedback, where information about hand position was available. Errors in the direction and in the amplitude of each reaching movement were recorded separately. The results show that temporal delay significantly affects the pointing movements of these children. Accuracy (mean) deteriorated after only 1 s whereas the precision (standard deviation) of the responses deteriorated after 4 s. Errors in amplitude, but not errors in direction, were reduced by the provision of visual feedback. Taken together, the findings suggest that amplitude and directional components of pointing in childhood utilise different sources of information, which differ in the extent to which temporal constraints operate.     

Tracking and inferring spatial rotation by children and great apes

Finding hidden objects in space is a fundamental ability that has received considerable research attention from both a developmental and a comparative perspective. Tracking the rotational displacements of containers and hidden objects is a particularly challenging task. This study investigated the ability of 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-year-old children and great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) to (a) visually track rotational displacements of a baited container on a platform and (b) infer its displacements by using the changes of position or orientation of 3 landmarks: an object on a container, the color of the containers, and the color of the platform on which the containers rested. Great apes and 5-year-old and older children successfully tracked visible rotations, but only children were able to infer the location of a correct cup (with the help of landmarks) after invisible rotations. The ability to use landmarks changed with age so that younger children solved this task only with the most explicit marker on the baited container, whereas older children, particularly 9-year-olds, were able to use landmark orientation to infer correct locations.     

Spatial perspective taking: Coordination of left-right and near-far spatial dimensions

Second- and fourth-grade children viewed a cylindrical object in nine positions on a square display board marked with a 3 × 3 grid. As the object was placed in each position, children identified the view from 90, 180, or 270° positions around the display from a set of photographs. Perspectives in which the object differed from the child's view in both left-right and near-far dimensions were more difficult than perspectives that only transformed one dimension. Error rates decreased with age. There were no main effects of left-right vs near-far or of observer position. Rates of egocentric responding were high at both ages. We note that the complementary spatial dimension to left-right is near-far not front-back. Moreover, the relative ease of front-back transformations in previous research resulted from distinctive front-back cues on the display objects which enabled subjects to use nonspatial strategies to identify observer perspectives.     

One-year-olds comprehend the communicative intentions behind gestures in a hiding game

This study explored infants' ability to infer communicative intent as expressed in non-linguistic gestures. Sixty children aged 14, 18 and 24 months participated. In the context of a hiding game, an adult indicated for the child the location of a hidden toy by giving a communicative cue: either pointing or ostensive gazing toward the container containing the toy. To succeed in this task children had to do more than just follow the point or gaze to the target container. They also had to infer that the adult's behaviour was relevant to the situation at hand - she wanted to inform them that the toy was inside the container toward which she gestured. Children at all three ages successfully used both types of cues. We conclude that infants as young as 14 months of age can, in some situations, interpret an adult behaviour as a relevant communicative act done for them.     

Spatial representation by blind and sighted children

Spatial representation by 72 blind and blindfolded sighted children between the ages of 6 and 11 was tested in two experiments by mental rotation of a raised line under conditions of clockwise varied directions.Experiment 1 showed that the two groups were well matched on tactual recognition and scored equally badly on matching displays to their own mentally rotated position.Experiment 2 found the sighted superior in recall tests. There was a highly significant interaction between sighted status and degree of rotation. Degree of rotation affected only the blind. Their scores were significantly lower for rotating to oblique and to the far orthogonal directions than to near orthogonal test positions. On near orthogonals the blind did not differ from the sighted.Age was a main effect, but it did not interact with any other variable. Older blind children whose visual experience dated from before the age of 6 were superior to congenitally blind subjects, but not differentially more so on oblique directions.The results were discussed in relation to hypotheses about the nature of spatial representation and strategies by children whose prior experience derived from vision or from touch and movement.     

Scene and position specificity in visual memory for objects

This study investigated whether and how visual representations of individual objects are bound in memory to scene context. Participants viewed a series of naturalistic scenes, and memory for the visual form of a target object in each scene was examined in a 2-alternative forced-choice test, with the distractor object either a different object token or the target object rotated in depth. In Experiments 1 and 2, object memory performance was more accurate when the test object alternatives were displayed within the original scene than when they were displayed in isolation, demonstrating object-to-scene binding. Experiment 3 tested the hypothesis that episodic scene representations are formed through the binding of object representations to scene locations. Consistent with this hypothesis, memory performance was more accurate when the test alternatives were displayed within the scene at the same position originally occupied by the target than when they were displayed at a different position.     

不同平面心理旋转的角色效应

本研究采用实验方法,分别在水平面和冠状面内对第一人称角色和第三人称角色心理旋转进行对比性研究。实验结果表明：空间表征转换的角色方式对心理旋转产生显著影响,第三人称角色心理旋转易于第一人称角色心理旋转,即存在心理旋转的角色效应;心理旋转的角色效应并不是在特定旋转条件下才出现的,具有更大的普遍性     

Developmental differences in reactions to children labeled mentally retarded

In an attempt to examine age-related differences in response to the mental retardation label, 48 4th and 5th graders and 48 11th and 12th graders were told of a child of their own age and sex who was either labeled mentally retarded or unlabeled and who performed either competently or incompetently in giving a report. Incompetent target children were viewed more negatively than competent ones at both grade levels. The mental retardation label had less generalized impacts, leading girls but not boys (a) to cite lack of ability as the reason for a retarded child's failure, and (b) to hold low expectations that retarded targets would hold jobs, marry, or have children. A developmental shift in responses to the label was evident only on a trait perception measure; younger children stigmatized retarded targets, while older children granted special dispensation of a failing retarded child by viewing him or her more positively than a similarly incompetent but unlabeled child. Since only adolescent boys showed special dispensation, even though girls were more generally attentive to the label, both sex and age differences warrant further examination.     

Standard errors for procrustes solutions

The asymptotic standard errors for the procrustes solutions are derived for orthogonal rotation, direct oblique rotation and indirect oblique rotation. The standard errors for the first two rotations are obtained using the augmented information matrices. For the indirect oblique solution, the standard errors of rotated parameters are derived from the information matrix of unrotated loadings using the chain rule for information matrices. For all three types of rotation, the standard errors of rotated parameters are presented for unstandardized and standardized manifest variables. Numerical examples show the similarity of theoretical and simulated values.     

Mental rotation and the perspective problem

Experiment I contrasts the difficulty of problems in which a child must anticipate the appearance of an array of objects that is rotated (rotation problems) to the difficulty of problems in which a child must anticipate the appearance of a fixed array to an observer who has been rotated with respect to it (perspective problems). Perspective problems are much more difficult and show a different error pattern. Experiment II contrasts standard perspective problems, in which a child must anticipate the appearance of the array to an observer whose position differs from his own, to “perspective-move” problems, in which a child must anticipate the appearance of the array from his own new position; i.e., he himself moves. The latter problems are much easier, and the error pattern is much like that for rotation problems. The mental operations involved in solving these various types of problems are discussed.