Longitudinal development of cognitive mapping from childhood to adolescence

Cross-sectional studies have suggested that the ability to form cognitive maps increases throughout childhood and reaches adult levels during early adolescence. However, adults show large individual differences in their ability to relate local routes to form a global map. Children also vary, but when does variation stabilize? We asked participants from a previously published cross-sectional study [Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2018), Vol. 170, pp. 86-106] to return for a second session of testing 3 years later to examine whether longitudinal stability is more evident at older ages. The subsample of 50 of the original 105 participants available for retesting did not differ from the original sample on male-female ratio or Session 1 task performance. We reassessed performance on the Virtual Silcton navigation paradigm, the Spatial Orientation Test (SOT), and the Mental Rotation Test (MRT) and added parents' scores on the SOT and MRT at Timepoint 2. Our initial analyses of normative development aligned with prior cross-sectional findings; overall navigation performance reached adult levels of proficiency around 12 years of age. In addition, variation in route integration abilities, as measured by between-route pointing, stabilized around 12 years of age; that is, longitudinal stability was higher in the older cohort than in the younger cohort. The same pattern appeared for the MRT.