Regular Article
Toddlers' Use of Metric Information and Landmarks to Reorient

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Abstract

Mobile organisms can keep track of spatial location (both their own location and that of objects in the environment) using either an external referent system or one centered on the self and updated by information about movement through space. When the latter system is disabled (e.g., by rapid turning), aspects of the external world must be used to reestablish orientation. Recently, it has been claimed that, both for rats and for human toddlers, reorientation is achieved using a geometric module that accepts only information about the metric properties of the environment (C. R. Gallistel, 1990; L. Hermer & E. S. Spelke, 1994, 1996). In a series of experiments, this paper confirms that geometric information is used for reorientation by young children, but gives reason to doubt that the use of this information is achieved using a module impenetrable to nongeometric information.

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      Learmonth et al. tested 17–24-month-old children in the disorientation search task in which they needed to reorient by using the left/right relation between a hidden object and the featural cue of a room. The children were more successful at reorienting when the featural cue was a bookshelf rather than a colored wall as the bookshelf was a more stable and reliable cue that could facilitate performance without language (Learmonth et al., 2001; but see Lee & Spelke, 2010 for alternative interpretation). Additionally, other work showed that children could perform well in relational tasks without showing evidence of verbal recoding (Nardini et al., 2006).

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    This research was originally the basis for a Ph.D. dissertation by the first author, with the second author as advisor. We thank the core committee members, Tim Shipley and Bill Overton, for their continuing comments on the research and the readers of the dissertation, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Bob Weisberg, and Marsha Weinraub, for their input. We also thank Camille Rocroi for help in working with children and the parents and children for participating. The research was supported by NSF Grants SBE 9631680 and 9905098. Portions of these studies were presented at the Psychonomics Society (Dallas, TX, November 1998) and at APA (August 1999).

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    Address correspondence and reprint requests to Nora S. Newcombe, 565 Weiss Hall, 1701 N. 13th Street, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122-6085. E-mail: [email protected].

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