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The Spatial Coding Strategies of One‐Year‐Old Infants in a Locomotor Search Task
Author(s) -
Bushnell Emily W.,
McKenzie Beryl E.,
Lawrence Deborah A.,
Connell Sheryl
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1995.tb00914.x
Subject(s) - landmark , coding (social sciences) , psychology , spatial cognition , object permanence , task (project management) , cognitive map , space (punctuation) , object (grammar) , visual search , artificial intelligence , cognitive psychology , cognition , communication , computer vision , computer science , cognitive development , mathematics , statistics , neuroscience , management , economics , operating system
The ability of 1‐year‐old infants to remember the location of a nonvisible target was investigated in 3 experiments. Infants searched for a toy hidden in one of many possible locations within a circular bounded space. The presence, number, and spatial arrangement of local cues or “landmarks” within this space were varied. The results of Experiment 1 showed that search performance was highly successful when a landmark was coincident with the location of the toy (“direct”), but less successful when a landmark was adjacent to the target location (“indirect”). The results of Experiment 2 suggested that search with an indirect landmark may be more fragile than search with no landmarks at all. In Experiments 3a and 3b, 2 different configurations of indirect landmarks were employed; search performance was equally poor with both of these and was inferior to search with no landmarks. It is concluded that infants of this age are able to associate a nonvisible target with a direct landmark and are able to code the distance and direction of a target with respect to themselves or with respect to the larger framework. However, there was no evidence that they can code the distance and direction of a target relative to another object. The difficulty of coding with indirect landmarks is interpreted in terms of cognitive complexity and conflict between spatial strategies.