Young children's representation of local information (angle and length) for relocation

As local spatial cues, angle and length information are known to be effective cues for relocation in adults, yet young children often struggle with using such information. We propose that the previously found late utilization of local geometric cues might be partly attributed to the testing environments, where connected enclosures provided immediate access to its global shape. Here, we investigated at what age children acquire the ability to relocate using local angle and length information in fragmented arrays, without available global shape, and whether children represent such information for relocation in enclosures. We found that both 3-year-olds (Experiment 1: n = 29, 15 girls; Experiment 2: n = 28, 13 girls) and 4-year-olds (Experiment 1: n = 28, 14 girls; Experiment 2: n = 29, 15 girls) successfully relocated using angle or length information in fragmented arrays, where these local cues were the only available cues. However, only 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds represented angle or length information for relocation in an enclosure offering both global shape and local geometric information. Importantly, 3-year-olds' failure in enclosures could not be attributed to their inability to perceive and represent such information itself. Instead, it may be that young children fail to spontaneously represent local geometric information in enclosures, and that young children face greater cognitive demands on mental segmentation when processing angle and length information in enclosures where global shape is prominent. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).