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Reorientation and landmark-guided search by young children: evidence for two systems
Sang Ah Lee1, Anna Shusterman, Elizabeth S Spelke
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. lee@wjh.harvard.edu
Abstract:
Disoriented 4-year-old children use a distinctive container to locate a hidden object, but do they reorient by this information? We addressed this question by testing children's search for objects in a circular room containing one distinctive and two identical containers. Children's search patterns provided evidence that the distinctive container served as a direct cue to a hidden object's location, but not as a directional signal guiding reorientation. The findings suggest that disoriented children's search behavior depends on two distinct processes: a modular reorientation process attuned to the geometry of the surface layout and an associative process linking landmarks to specific locations.
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