title: Evidence of a relational spatial strategy in learning the centre of enclosures in human children (Homo sapiens).
abstract: Three- to five-year-old children were trained to localize a sensor hidden underneath the floor, in the centre of a square-shaped enclosure (1.5m×1.5m). Walking over the sensor caused a pleasant music to be played in the environment, thus engaging children in a playful spatial search. Children easily learned to find the centre of the training environment starting from random positions. After training, children were tested in enclosures of different size and/or shape: a larger square-shaped enclosure (3m×3m), a rectangle-shaped enclosure (1.5m×3m), an equilateral triangle-shaped enclosure (side 3m) and an isosceles triangle-shaped enclosure (base 1.5m; sides 3m). Children searched in the central region of the enclosures, their precision varying as a function of the similarity of the testing enclosure's shape to the shape of the training enclosure. This suggests that a relational spatial strategy was used, and that it depended on the encoding of geometrical shape. This result highlights a distinctive role of the geometric centre of enclosed spaces in place learning in children, as already observed in nonhuman species.
authors: University of Chieti, Italy. Electronic address: luca.tommasi@unich.it.
authors: Luca
authors: L
authors: Tommasi
authors: University of Chieti, Italy.
authors: Alda
authors: A
authors: Giuliano
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D065853:Spatial Learning / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Centre; Children; Geometry; Place learning; Spatial cognition; Spatial strategies