Using mother as a spatial landmark: Evidence against egocentric coding in infancy

30 9-mo-old infants learned to turn one way to view a visual event. In a transfer task, they were rotated 180°. The mothers of half the Ss moved with them as in previous procedures, and the other mothers remained in a fixed position throughout training and testing. Ss made more turns to the same spa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Developmental psychology 1982-09, Vol.18 (5), p.699-703
Main Authors: Presson, Clark C, Ihrig, Laurie H
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cues
Egocentrism
Human
Spatial Orientation (Perception)
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Summary:30 9-mo-old infants learned to turn one way to view a visual event. In a transfer task, they were rotated 180°. The mothers of half the Ss moved with them as in previous procedures, and the other mothers remained in a fixed position throughout training and testing. Ss made more turns to the same spatial location when their mothers did not move. Thus, Ss used their mother's position as a cue to their spatial response. Results suggest that even in situations in which young infants were judged egocentric, they may have been using objective, nonegocentric information. Thus, even apparent errors do not preclude the presence of objective representation. (14 ref)
ISSN:0012-1649
1939-0599
DOI:10.1037/0012-1649.18.5.699