Separation of geometric and featural information in children’s spatial representation: Evidence from a model selection task

Abstract

Previous studies in spatial reorientation have found that young children rely mainly on geometric shapes for reorientation and sometimes ignore features in the environment. Theoretical interpretations of children’s reorientation performance are usually attributed to children’s spatial representation of their surrounding environments. The geometric module theory states that featural information is represented separately from geometric shape in young children’s reorientation, whereas the adaptive combination model depicts an integral representation. Reorientation tasks, however, require the recognition of a specific location, and thus how the whole environment is represented remains unknown. The current study, using a model selection task, explored young children’s representation of the whole surrounding environment. A total of 75 children aged 3–5 years participated in the study. In each trial, children observed a large enclosure and were then asked to choose the corresponding model from two small models. The geometric shapes of the enclosure (rectangle vs. rhombus) and the types of distractors (shape distraction vs. feature position distraction) varied. Results showed that all three age groups performed above the chance level in the shape distraction conditions. Children had more difficulty with the feature position distraction conditions than with the shape distraction conditions. When the distractor shared the feature but at an inappropriate position, children’s performance was significantly poorer, especially in the rhombic enclosure. The results provide evidence that young children may represent featural cues separately from geometric shapes.