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Pointing at objects in other rooms: young children's sensitivity to perspective after walking with and without vision
1Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203.
Insights
Children older than 36 months can perceive spatial changes even when occluded. Younger children
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Spatial cognition
- Perception
Background:
- Locomotion significantly impacts an observer's spatial perspective.
- Understanding how children perceive these spatial changes is crucial for developmental research.
- Investigating sensitivity to occluded perspective changes informs theories of early spatial awareness.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the sensitivity of 12-48-month-old children to perspective changes.
- To examine responses to occluded targets by walls and darkness.
- To differentiate sensitivity to proprioceptive versus visual-environmental cues.
Main Methods:
- Children (12-48 months) viewed a target, moved to an adjacent room, and pointed to the target's location.
- Experiments involved occlusion by walls and darkness.
- Sensitivity to proprioceptive and visual-environmental cues was assessed, including effects of training and continuous viewing.
Main Results:
- Children older than 36 months accurately pointed to occluded targets.
- 48-month-olds showed sensitivity to both proprioceptive and visual-environmental cues.
- 24-month-olds' responses varied based on cue presence, indicating developing spatial awareness.
Conclusions:
- Proprioceptive cues for perspective changes are recognized relatively early in development.
- Sensitivity to visual-environmental cues emerges later.
- Age-related differences in processing spatial information under occlusion are evident.
Abstract:
Locomotion alters the spatial structure of an observer's perspective, that is, the network of observer to environment distances and directions. The purpose of the present 6 experiments was to investigate the sensitivity of 12-48-month-olds to changes in perspective that are occluded from view by walls and by darkness. To assess sensitivity, children were shown a target object in one room, walked into an adjacent room and asked to point in the straight-line direction at the target. In Experiment 1, 42 12-48-month-olds were tested and results indicated that children older than 36 months responded by pointing straight at the occluded target, whereas younger children tended to point in the direction of their route away from the target. In Experiments 2-4, 24- and 48-month-olds were tested and results demonstrated that 48-month-olds were sensitive to the proprioceptive and to the visual-environmental cues for the changes in perspective structure. The 24-month-olds, however, responded by pointing straight toward the target when visual-environmental cues were absent, whereas they pointed in the direction of their route when they were present. In Experiments 5 and 6 additional 24-month-olds were tested to assess the effects of short-term training and of a continuous view of the target on responding in the presence of visual-environmental cues. The results indicated relatively early sensitivity to proprioceptive cues for changes in perspective and somewhat later sensitivity to appropriate visual-environmental cues under these conditions.