PROCESSES UNDERLYING YOUNG CHILDRENS SPATIAL ORIENTATION DURING MOVEMENT

Children between 1.5 and 4 years old were tested for their ability to relocate a hidden object after a 180-degrees self-produced movement ar ound an array of four locations. In one task the object's location rel ative to the other locations could be uniquely defined within one dime nsion, while in another two dimensions were needed to do this. No diff erences emerged between conditions, and by 3 years few errors occurred , despite the fact that children were unable to view the array during movement. This indicates either that young children encounter no speci fic difficulty in coordinating dimensions or that they solved the task without recourse to such a system. An error analysis supports the sec ond possibility. Children apparently tackled the task by a system dire ctly related to body movement, since errors were frequently the result of incomplete compensation for movement around the array. In a second study in which the four containers were placed in contact, children's performance declined and the relation between direction of movement a nd error was replaced by some evidence for updating on the near-far di mension accompanied by failure to update the left-right dimension. Thu s children appear to change strategy when the problem requires more pr ecise specification of target location. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.