Componential cognitive correlates of wayfinding in 5- to 6-year-old children: perspective taking, working memory, and...

Wayfinding in early childhood is often treated as a general ability to learn or reproduce routes, yet different navigation situations may rely on partially distinct cognitive processes. This study examined whether wayfinding in 5- to 6-year-old children shows component-specific performance patterns and cognitive correlates.

Children completed three wayfinding tasks adapted from the Navigation Test Suite: route repetition, directional approach, and route retracing. They also completed measures of agent-based and non-agent-based visuospatial perspective taking (VSPT), maze-like perspective taking, forward and backward digit span, nonverbal reasoning, and receptive vocabulary. Performance differences across wayfinding tasks and their associations with cognitive measures were examined using repeated-measures comparisons, correlation analyses, and hierarchical regression models.

Children performed best on route repetition, followed by directional approach, and performed worst on route retracing. Correlations among the three wayfinding tasks were modest and selective. Hierarchical regression analyses further revealed component-specific cognitive correlates: agent-based VSPT uniquely predicted directional approach, whereas non-agent-based VSPT uniquely predicted route repetition. Backward digit span was associated primarily with directional approach, while nonverbal reasoning was associated with directional approach and route retracing.

The findings support a componential account of early wayfinding. Rather than reflecting a single route-learning ability, different wayfinding situations appear to draw on partly differentiated cognitive processes. In particular, the observed patterns point to potentially distinct contributions of route reproduction, reference-frame transformation, executive updating, and route-level spatial reconstruction to wayfinding during the late preschool period.