The Development of the Abilities Required to Understand Spatial Representations

Abstract

This paper considers the cognitive abilities which are required for using a spatial representation for wayfinding. These abilities include an awareness of correspondence (i.e. that there are specific spatial relationships in common between a map and the environment which it represents); the application of strategies (i.e. the use of spatial strategies to extract appropriate information from the representation which can then be applied in the environment); and the ability to find one’s own position on a representation. These abilities are discussed with reference to recent experiments which have investigated the earliest evidence for the development of such abilities in young children. Children from the age of 3 years have some limited appreciation of the correspondence between a representation and the environment; from 4 years of age children can start to use simple maps, and they can understand that their own position can be indicated on a map. However, children of 4 years are generally limited in the spatial strategies which they can apply when using a representation. For example, 4 year olds tend to focus only on a single item of information from the map and though this can be adequate for some map using tasks, in other tasks one item of information may be insufficient to carry out the task successfully. With increasing age, children are able to take into account more information from a representation and they develop progressively more appropriate spatial strategies when using representations to find places or follow routes through the environment.