PLACE RECOGNITION AND WAY FINDING BY CHILDREN AND ADULTS

Children and adults were escorted on their first walk across our unive rsity campus and were periodically led off the original route during t he return trip. During the return, we stopped prior to intersections o n and off the original route to obtain estimates of place recognition accuracy and confidence. The subjects were then asked to point to the path that led back to the start and were corrected if wrong. Accuracy of place recognition was intermediate in a way-finding task requiring reversal of an incidentally learned novel route. However, accuracy inc reased as subjects were farther from the original route, indicating th at the presence of novel landmarks boosted the discrimination of old a nd new places. Eight-year-old children were less accurate than 12-year -old children and 25-year-old adults, who did not differ in accuracy. There was a similar age difference in the ability to point to the dire ction to return when subjects correctly recognized that they were off route. The results are used to develop a model of way finding by place recognition.