Effects of motor activity on children's intentional and incidental memory for spatial locations

Kindergartners (means = 57) and third graders (means = 8-7) encountered a large model town in 1 of 3 conditions of motor involvement with the environment: standing, riding, or walking. Half the children in each motor condition were instructed to remember the location of the buildings (international memory), while the remaining children were not given specific memory instructions (incidental memory). Only the kindergartners' accuracy increased as a function of the amount of motor activity. There was no difference between intentional and incidental memory conditions. It was concluded that: (1) Kindergartners depend on motor activity more than third graders to learn about the location of objects in an unfamiliar environment; and (2) the complexity of the spatial task was primarily responsible for equivalent performance in the intentional and incidental memory conditions.