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The spatial representation of power in children
Lifeng Lu1, Thomas W Schubert2, Lei Zhu3
1Department of Psychology, Fudan University, Handan Road 220, Shanghai, SH, 200433, People's Republic of China.
Children mentally represent power in vertical space, but this association is not spontaneously judged in incidental tasks. This spatial representation develops before formal instruction on power-space links.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Social Cognition
Background:
- Adults mentally represent power using vertical space.
- Understanding of power-space representation in children is limited.
- Investigating the development of abstract concept spatialization.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine how children mentally represent power in relation to vertical space.
- To compare children's and adults' use of vertical cues in power evaluation.
- To determine if children's spatial representation of power is implicit or explicit.
Main Methods:
- Utilized an explicit power evaluation task and an incidental task.
- Assessed the influence of vertical motor cues (cursor keys) on response times.
- Tested both children and adults on their processing of power-related labels.
Main Results:
- Vertical motor cues interfered with explicit power judgments in both children and adults.
- This interference effect was absent in children during the incidental task.
- Adults showed consistent interference across both explicit and incidental tasks.
Conclusions:
- Children possess an implicit spatial representation of power linked to verticality.
- This representation develops prior to formal education on power-space associations.
- Children do not spontaneously utilize this spatial representation for power judgments in all contexts.
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