Task variation and young children's understanding of a model of a familiarspace

Models are one example of external spatial representations which provide in formation about referent spaces of the wider world. The ability to understa nd and use such representations is an important one, since they can provide previously unknown information about the real world, as well as affecting how we think about and visualise it. Previous research has provided differi ng indications as to the age at which such understanding emerges in childre n. These differences may be the result of the different methods and tasks w hich have been used to assess children's understanding of spatial represent ations, since these tasks and methods may not necessarily be equivalent in terms of the cognitive processes involved. The two experiments reported her e provide a starting point for a systematic investigation into two tasks an d two methods used. Performance on a hide-and-seek type task is compared to performance on a positioning task, and the ability of children to make inf erences about a referent space on the basis of a representation is compared to their ability to make the converse inferences. Results suggest that you ng children may find it easier to infer from a referent space to a represen tation, but that this may depend upon the particular task they are asked to carry out. Possible reasons for these differences are discussed, as are th e implications for assessing children's actual competence in this domain, a s opposed to the cognitive load of the experimental design.