Developmental Differences in Giving Directions: Spatial Frames of Reference and Mental Rotation

The spatial referents "left" and "right" are one of the most common means for specifying direction and location, yet little is known about the processes that underlie the use of these concepts. Two studies tested the hypothesis that children and adults who correctly identify left...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child development 1993-08, Vol.64 (4), p.1258-1270
Main Authors: Roberts, Ralph J., Aman, Christine J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults
Age differences
Attention
Child
Child Development
Children
Childrens rights
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive Development
Directions
Experimentation
Female
Humans
Imagination
Left Right Discrimination
Male
Mental Representation
Mental rotation
Observational frames of reference
Orientation
Problem Solving
Puppets
Reaction Time
Reference Values
Referents
Right turns
Social research
Space Perception
Spatial Ability
Spatial information processing
Transponders
Young Children
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The spatial referents "left" and "right" are one of the most common means for specifying direction and location, yet little is known about the processes that underlie the use of these concepts. Two studies tested the hypothesis that children and adults who correctly identify left-right directions from nonoccupied orientations perform imagined rotations to align the self's frame of reference with the other's. Children who make incorrect judgments from nonoccupied orientations were hypothesized to use a stationary egocentric reference frame. 28 6- and 8-year-old children and 9 adults were tested on a task that required making left-right direction judgments from various rotated orientations. The results supported the mental rotation hypothesis: Only correct responders showed a linear increase in response time with increasing angular disparity between the self and other. Mental rotation permits the continued use of an egocentric reference frame for specifying left-right relations from nonoccupied positions.
ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
DOI:10.2307/1131338