title: The development of hierarchical representation of two-dimensional space.
abstract: Adults represent the location of a point in a 2-dimensional space using 2 independent dimensions. They encode location along these dimensions both at a fine-grained level and categorically. In reporting location, they combine and weight the fine-grained and categorical information. In Experiment 1, we found that children as young as 5 years use the same 2 independent dimensions in fine-grained spatial coding of location in a circle as are used by adults-radius and angle. However, categorical coding and hierarchical combination are seen only for radius, at both 5 and 7 years. The adult pattern, where angle as well as radius is coded hierarchically, emerges by 9 years. Experiment 2 shows that there is nothing intrinsically difficult about the categorical coding of angular information; when angle is the only dimension to be encoded, younger children use hierarchical coding. Changes in 2-dimensional hierarchical coding may be due to cognitive load factors and to changes in ability to assign frames of reference.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
authors.forename: E H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Sandberg
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Huttenlocher
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Newcombe
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D013028:Space Perception