The development of memory for location: What role do spatial-prototypes play?

Two experiments investigated the role of spatial prototypes in estimates of location. In Experiment 1 (N = 144), children and adults learned the locat ions of 20 objects in an open, square box designed to look Like a model hou se. In two conditions, opaque lines or walls divided the house into four re gions, and in the other condition, no boundaries were present. Following le arning, the dots marking the locations were removed, and participants attem pted to replace the objects. Children and adults overestimated distances be tween target locations in different regions. Contrary to Huttenlocher, Hedg es, and Duncan's hierarchical theory of spatial memory, none of the groups displaced the objects toward the region centers. In Experiment 2 (N = 96), boundaries were removed during testing to determine whether children and ad ults were more likely to displace objects toward region centers when uncert ainty about location increased. Again, all age groups overestimated distanc es between target objects in different regions. In addition, adults and 11- year-olds in the most salient boundary condition displaced objects toward t he region centers. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for understanding how children and adults estimate location.