DEVELOPMENT OF SPATIAL MEMORY AND SPATIAL ORIENTATION IN PRESCHOOLERSAND PRIMARY-SCHOOL CHILDREN

The present study addresses the question of what kind of information c hildren use when orientating in new environments, if given proximal an d distal landmarks, and how spatial memory develops in the investigate d age groups. Ten 5-year-old, ten 7-year-old and ten 10-year-old child ren were presented with the 'Kiel Locomotor Maze', containing features of the Radial Arm Maze and the Morris Water Maze, in order to assess spatial memory and orientation. Children had to learn to approach bait ed locations only. Task difficulty was equated with respect to the chi ldren's age. Training was given until the children reached criterion. During testing, the maze configuration and response requirements were systematically altered, including response rotation, cue rotation, cue deletion and response rotation with cue deletion in order to assess t he spatial strategies used by the children. During training and testin g, working-memory errors (WM), reference-memory errors (RM) and workin g-reference memory errors (WR) were recorded. As expected, no differen ce between age groups appeared during training, thus confirming compar able task difficulty across age groups. During testing, age groups dif fered significantly with regard to the orientation strategy used. The 5-year-olds were bound to a cue strategy, orientating towards local, p roximal cues. The 10-year-olds mastered all tasks, thus displaying a p lace strategy, being able to use distal cues for orientation, and were even able to do so after being related 180 degrees. The 7-year-olds p roved to be at an age of transition: five of them were bound to a cue strategy, five children were able to adopt a place strategy. The diffe rences in the orientation strategies used by children of different age groups was reflected by the sum of errors they made, also by RM. WM w ere found to be rare, especially in older children. We conclude that p reschoolers use a cue strategy, that the development of place strategi es occurs during primary school age and seems to be complete by the ag e of 10 years.