The development of relational landmark use in six- to twelve-month-old infants in a spatial orientation task.
The ability to use the relations between visible landmarks to locate nonvisible goals (allocentric spatial coding) underlies success on a variety of everyday spatial orientation problems. Little is known about the development of true relational coding in infancy. Ninety-six 6-, 8.5- and 12-month-old infants were observed in a peekaboo paradigm in which they had to turn to a target location after displacement to a novel position and direction of facing. In a landmark condition, the target position was located between two landmarks, contrasted with a control condition in which no distinctive landmarks were provided. Six-month-old infants performed poorly in both conditions, 8.5-month-olds were significantly better with the landmarks, and 12-month-olds solved the task with or without landmarks. A follow-up study confirmed that the 8.5-month-olds used both landmarks to solve the task. This demonstration of allocentric spatial coding in 8.5-month-old infants shows earlier competence than that found in previous work in which only infants at the end of the first year were able to use landmarks relationally.
Lew
A R
AR
School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, UK. a.r.lew@bangor.ac.uk
Bremner
J G
JG
Lefkovitch
L P
LP
D000367:Age Factors; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention; D002657:Child Development; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D013028:Space Perception