Children’s spatial representation of power during an incidental power evaluation task

Abstract

There is growing evidence showing that power is represented as height in adults’ mind. However, it remains unknown at what age children can activate such spatial representation of power spontaneously during an incidental task without explicit power evaluation. This study investigated the development of the power-spatial representation during an incidental task without explicit power evaluation. Participants were Chinese children in primary school, children in high school and adults. The results revealed that vertical information interfered with semantic judgments of power words only for children in high school and adults. This might be due to the reason that explicit instructions about the power-space associations did not appear in textbooks before high school. The findings suggested that children did not have automatic access to the spatial representation of power until high school.