Week 5 Flashcards
Spatial cognition overview
Spatial cognition involves the attainment, use, and adjustment of knowledge about spatial relationships and environments. The development of spatial cognition abilities is essential for a variety of skills essential for daily functioning (e.g., finding one’s way around) and for higher-order processes (e.g., advanced mathematics). As such, an understanding of what young children understand about three-dimensional space and how this knowledge arises is of fundamental interest to developmental science.
(Kaufman & Cameron-Bradley, 2015, p. 116)
Spatial Reference
Frames of spatial reference
Spatial cognition involves acquiring, using, and regularly updating information about your environment, by conceptualising spatial relationships between objects. Humans are sometimes described as having poor spatial cognition abilities.
Read about how the frames of spatial reference apply to infants in Spatial frames of reference used by infants (Links to an external site.) (Kaufman & Cameron-Bradley, 2015, pp. 118–120).
Spatial categorisation
There are two main hypotheses when considering infants’ understanding of spatial relationships:
Universal hypothesis: Space is universal to all organisms, so infants should be born with innate spatial understanding. Learned hypothesis: Infants learn about space through interactions with their environment.
The reading this week proposes arguments and evidence for both.
Kaufman and Cameron-Bradley (2015) discuss spatial categorisation in regards to ‘how the developing mind categorises the relationships that are held between two objects’. Read more about this concept in Spatial categorisation in infancy (Links to an external site.) (Kaufman & Cameron-Bradley, 2015, pp. 116–118).
Spatial categorisation allows us to place ourselves in relation to other objects and orientate ourselves within our environment. The following material is from French psychologist Alfred Binet who in 1894 found himself disorientated while walking in a familiar environment due to the flipping of his internal map. Read the following excerpt from ‘Reverse illusions of orientation’ (1894). As you read, consider a time when you became disorientated in a familiar place, posssibly as a passenger in a car, momentarily ‘zoning-out’ and then trying to locate yourself spatially on returning to reality. This week’s discussion will allow you to explore how you, as an adult, think about this.
Alfred Binet
I was proceeding toward the Latin quarter, and had to cross the Rue de Reine with Mont Parnassus station on the right, the Boulevard St. Germain station on the left; and I proceeded with the idea of coming to the Rue de Reine. Probably lost in thought, I crossed this street without perceiving it. I continued on my way persuaded that I had it before me. At the end of some moments, not recognising where I was, I retraced my steps, reading the names of the streets. I came to the Rue de Reine with the station on the left, the boulevard on the right. My confusion was extreme, and I found myself for some time in a state of complete disorientation, and unable to comprehend the situation. The state did not at all resemble that which is produced in an unknown place - in a forest, for example, where one has gone astray and does not know where he is. Here you know very well where you are. You have a very clear sense of direction and you know perfectly where things ought to be; only this direction and this place are just the opposite of their real position. The station of Mont Parnassus ought to be on the right, and I did not understand why I did not see it there. What we have then in these particular cases is a completely false orientation.
Spatial cognition of infants over time
The following interactive activity shows the spatial cognition infants display over a period of time (0-18 months). The spatial categories on the right of the timeline represent an infant’s ability to identify certain ‘qualities’ of space. The development of this cognition often involves an initial recognition of the category followed later by an ability to abstract this (meaning they can think about this concept in a more complex way outside the context they are witnessing it in). The information in the timeline is from this week’s reading (Kaufman & Cameron-Bradley, 2015, pp. 116–118). You may wish to use the timeline in conjunction with the reading to fully understand the categories and the periods of time in which they occur.
Development of spatial cognition
Left/right
[T]he earliest demonstration of spatial category is that of left/right relationships. Gava et al. (2009) found that under certain conditions even 3-day-old infants demonstrate discrimination between spatial configurations representing this relationship, suggesting that rudimentary spatial categorization is innate.
Above/below <3-4 MONTHS>
Categorisation in the vertical plane is generally not demonstrated until at least 3 months of age (Newcombe, 2002). While the above/below relationship is arguably comparable in perceptual complexity to left/right relations, the ability to classify the former develops second. This difference in onset may stem from infants having greater early capacity for eye movements in across the horizontal rather than the vertical plane (Gava et al., 2009; Quinn et al., 1996). Specifically, infants at 3 months will readily discriminate above/below relationships, provided that the object has a simple shape, but not when it is more complex.
Between <6 months>
From 6 months of age, infants demonstrate a rudimentary recognition of the spatial categories of ‘between’ and ‘containment’ (Casasola et al., 2003).
Containment <6 months>
From 6 months of age, infants demonstrate a rudimentary recognition of the spatial categories of ‘between’ and ‘containment’ (Casasola et al., 2003).
Left/right <6 months>
Abstraction of this spatial category does not fully appear until about 6 months of age.
Above/below <6-7 months>
Until 6–7 months of age, this type of spatial discrimination falters when infants are prompted to categorize the locations of even slightly complex shapes. Specifically, infants at 3 months will readily discriminate above/below relationships, provided that the object has a simple shape, but not when it is more complex.
Between <10 months>
Abstraction of this spatial category does not appear until about 10 months of age (Casasola and Cohen, 2002). It is thought that this difference between this and the rudimentary recognition of ‘between’ is due to the requisite two landmarks that must be referenced in order to establish a betweenrelationship. This ability develops later, and is perceptually more complex than making reference to a single landmark (e.g., above/below spatial categorization Lew et al., 2000).
Containment <14 months>
Abstraction of this spatial category does not appear until about 14 months of age (Casasola and Cohen, 2002). When infants are prompted to manually place an object into a container, they first demonstrate competence at around this time. It is thought that this difference between this and the initial grasp of ‘containment’ is due to the requisite two landmarks that must be referenced in order to establish a between relationship. This ability develops later, and is perceptually more complex than making reference to a single landmark (e.g., above/below spatial categorization Lew et al., 2000).
Support <17-18 months>
The understanding of containment and support as spatial categories coincides with a rise in the salience of spatial language. Specifically, the ability of an infant to discriminate between different types of containment or support may relate to the language with which they are familiar. For example, discrimination between tight- and loose-fit relationships for containment (such as a hand in a glove compared to an orange in a fruit bowl) and support (such as a building block pushed on to join another, compared to the blocks sitting on a table) is somewhat dependent on having the spatial vocabulary to describe (or at least reference) this difference (Casasola, 2008).
Self-produced locomotion and spatial cognition
It seems likely then that the reason that self-produced locomotion (i.e., the onset of crawling) appears to trigger spatial competence … is not that it allows new forms of representation. Rather, locomotion experience increases motivation and ability to track self-movement around the room.
(Kaufman & Cameron-Bradley, 2015, p. 119).
Learn more about infants’ exploration of their environment and its links to their development in this week’s reading by Kaufman and Cameron-Bradley (2015).
Culture and spatial cognition in early childhood
Linguistic relativity
Linguistic relativity holds the hypothesis that language structure influences the speaker’s cognition. An example of this is with the perception of the color blue between native English and Russian speakers (Winawer et al., 2006). In Russian, there is an ‘obligatory distinction’ between lighter blues (goluboy) and darker blues (siniy). It was found that Russian speakers are faster at distinguishing shades of blue than English speakers.
Spatial categorisation
Cross-cultural differences in spatial cognition are not seen until children begin language acquisition. English-speaking and Korean-speaking toddlers differ in categorisation of containment and
support concepts, such as:
English: in and on Korean: kkita (tight fit), nehta (loose containment), nohta (loose support)
English speaking toddlers form similar categories when exposed to only tight versus loose fit categories (Casasola & Cohen, 2002).
Frames of reference (FoR)
Geocentric FoR
These encode spatial relationships with cardinal directions (north, south, east, west). For instance instead of ‘the glass is behind the plate’ (egocentric), ‘the glass is west of the plate’ (geocentric). Children in geocentric cultures use cardinal terms more readily than children from Western cultures. The following is also true of geocentric cultures:
Younger children also use egocentric FoR. By age four, children are almost entirely geocentric.
Western children (and adults) seldom use geocentric terms.
Read more about the link between culture and spatial cognition in Cultural differences (Links to an external site.) (Kaufman & Cameron-Bradley, 2015, pp. 123–124).
Linguistic relativity and geocentric FoR
Adults from cultures with languages that use geocentric FoR have stronger sense of cardinal
directions. In these cultures:
Adults can often orient to cardinal directions easily. Children may lose the ability to form geocentric FoR in new environments that lack known directional landmarks. This ability appears to be learned.
Read more about linguistic relativity in Language and spatial categorisation (Links to an external site.) (Kaufman & Cameron-Bradley, 2015, p. 123).
Read Spatial cognition during infancy and early childhood across cultures, development of (Links to an external site.) (Kaufman & Cameron-Bradley, 2015, pp. 116–125) which provides an answer to the question of how children represent the space that surrounds them by exploring key theories.
- spacial cognition involved the attainment, use and adjustment of knowledge about spatial relationship and environments. Its essential for daily functioning and higher-order processes.
Categorization of Simple Relationships
- infant categorization studies have relied on experiments in which infants were habituated or familiarised with a particular spatial array and then were presented with a spatial array that differen from the original in some spatial dimension.
- the earliest demonstration of spatial category is that of left/right relationships - 3 day old infants
- using habituation paradign, neonates were presented with various arrangements on a simple black and white display of moving or blinking dots on either side of a reference line.
- categorization in the vertical plane is generally not demonstrated until at least 3 months of age. While above/below relationship is arguable comparable in perceptual complexity to left/right relations, the ability to classify the former develops second. EG: categorization at 3 - 4 months remains dependent on the presence of a central referent line, as infants do not see to be able to internally generate a perceptual midline. Additionally, 6-7 months of age, ths type of spatial discrimination falters when infants are prompted to cateforise the locations even slightly complex shapes.
Categorization of more complex relationships:
- 6 months of age, infants demonstrate a rudimentary recognition of the spatial catefories of between and containment however abstraction of these spatial catefories doess not appear until about 10 - 14 months of age. This ability develops later and is perceptually more complex than making reference to a single landmark
- demonstrate competence at arnd 14 months of age.
- between 15 - 30 months of age, a great improvement is seen in infants understandings of specific containment principles.
- categorization of the spatial relationship of containment highlight some of the inherent complexity in mapping, development onto a timeline.
- Hespos and Baillargeon (2001) report the initial demostration of containment relationships at 3 months using looking times, much earlier than the previously reported 14 months. These findings arguable reflect the cognitive/perceptual building blocks for later containment categorization ability. Specifically the ability of an infant to disciminate between different types of containments or support may relate to the language with which they are familiar.
- Containment - hand in a glove compared to a orange in a fruit bowl
- Support - building block pushed on to join another, compared to the blocks stting on ta table.
- infants with more environmental experience are better able to determine if a space is occupied by one fused object or two separate objects.
Retinocentric VS Body-Centered FORS:
- the retinocentric is a primitive spatial FOR and encodes locations as a series of eye movements.d
- can be extracted directly from sensory signals and involves comparing the point of interest with other points in the visual field in order to establish the objects position in space. Initial evidence of retinocentric limitation was demonstrated in a double step task with 3 months old infants.
- found that 4 month olds who learned to follow a sequence of pictures appearing in opposite diagonal corners of a display showed retinocentric behaviour when an unrelated briefly presented stimulus appeared unexpectedly in the sequence. it is not until around 7 months of age that infants consistently account for intermediary eye movements and current eye position in sequence learning.
- its not surprising that infants can and do employ body-centered representations under other circumstances.
Body-Centred VS Allocentric:
- move from body-centered to allocentric representations.
- Bremner 1978 - found 8 - 9 months appeared to search egocentrically or in a body-centered fashion. this research revealed numerous factors that can significantly reduce body-centered search in such tasks. These factors include, the presence of salient, direct landmarks near the hiding position, visible geometric cues, familiarity with the testing environment.
- Kaufman and Needham - have argued that because of reaching for hidden objects is so challenging for young infants, they may be focusing on the process of reaching at the expense of attending to their passive movement around the room prior to the test trial.
- Locomotion experience increases motivation and ability to track self-movement around the room.
Geometric Cues:
- when experiments include informative geometric cues, they tend to reveal that infants perform markedly better at search-and-move tasks.
- 4.5-6.5 month olds were able to differentiate among corners of a 2 dimensional isosceles triable presented on a screen (Lurenco and Huttenlocher, 2008)
- Bremner 2007 - found infants as yound as 4 months are sensitive to an objects geometry.
- reorientation tasks involve disorienting the participant and determining what infomration is used to reorient within the testing apparatus.
- Hermer and Spelke 1994, 1996 - found that toddlers relied most entirely on geometric info when searching for a hidden toy and were virtually unable to use nongeometric landmarks such as toys in the room or a coloured wall.
- Lee and Spelke 2008 - 4 year old children successfully reoriented using the shape of an area formed by a very low wall, but not when the area was defined by large columns or connected lines on the floor even though they were able to detect the presence of all 3 types of bounary. They argues that while landmark stability is important, it is not sufficient for reorientation.
Nongeometric Cues:
Learmonth 2001 - found toddlers did reorient using nongeometric landmark cues. explained this difference in results by noting that Hermer and Spelke made use of a within subjects paradign. Argued that these procedures likely limited the toddlers perceptions of stability of teh potential landmarks provided making them unlikely to be used for navigation.
- Nardini 2008 - supports this finding, report greater landmark-based reorientation when toddlers are tested in an apparatus with multiple coloured walls.
- It could be argued that landmark cues of sufficient size can be construed as a geometric cue
Language and Spatial Categorization:
- Choi 2006 - infants tend to be less sensitive to spatial categories or relationships that are not illustrated in their native language.
- English learning toddlers distinguish between spatial categories based on the objects placement, such as containment and support.
- Korean leaning toddlers distinguish between those that result in a tight-fit relation for both containment and support events and those that results in a loose-fit containment or support events.
- English learning toddlers with the general semantics category of in resulted in the formation of a broad category of containment that included but did not differentiate between the two specific subcategories.
- Bali almost never used egocentric language when performing research tasks.
- Dasen and Wassmann 2004 - Swiss children, they found that the geocentric FOR was well established and used almost exclusively from 4 years. Predominately use egocentroc FOR when describing a scene.
- Spatial categorisation can include categorisation of relationships between two objects. Which of the following relationships has been found to develop first? (B)
a) Above/ below
b) Right/ left
c) Inside/ outside
d) Between/ containment
- Josh is walking through the city using his phone navigator. Josh’s phone battery unexpectedly stops working. Fortunately, Josh is familiar with the city and uses his knowledge of city landmarks to help guide him back to Flinder’s Street station (the main station in Melbourne). In this example Josh is using which type of Frame of Reference? (B)
a) Retinocentric
b) Allocentric
c) Body centred
d) Egocentric
- According to the universal hypothesis of spatial cognition which of the following statements are FALSE? (C)
a). Space is universal to all organisims
b). Spatial understanding is innate
c). Infants learn about space through interactions with their environment
d) All of the above statements are TRUE
- Which of the following factors have been found to influence a reduction of body centred search strategies? (D)
a) Presence of salient, direct landmarks near the hiding position
b) Visible geometric cues
c) Familiarity with the testing environment.
d) All of the above are TRUE
- Linguistic relativity holds the hypothesis that language structure influences the speaker’s cognition. Evidence of this is seen in cross cultural studies comparing English speaking and Korean Speaking toddlers that has found? (A)
a) Differences in the way that toddlers categorise containment and support
b) Differences in the way that toddlers categorise direction
c) Differences in the way that toddlers use geometric cues
d) No differences
- Identify the “geocentric” description (C)
a) the glass is to the right of the plate
b) the glass is below the plate
c) the glass is west of the plate
d) the glass is above the plate
- The earliest recognition of spatial categories observed in infancy is the (A)
a) left/right relationship
b) the above/below relationship
c) the between relationship
d) the containment relationship
