Spatial orientation in normal children and in children with early brain injury

Abstract

Fifty-one brain-injured children (7:7—17:0) were compared with fifty-two normal children (4:11—9:11) with respect to their ability to walk the paths indicated on ten visually presented maps. In an earlier study, using the same patterns, adults with cerebral injury sustained at maturity showed spatial orientation deficits associated with language deficits and elevated two-point somatosensory thresholds. Brain-damaged children were worse than controls beyond differences in their respective MA's, but their deficits were not associated with either language or somatosensory impairment. Rather, spatial errors were most pronounced in Ss with low performance scores on the WISC whether or not their language scores were relatively high. Unlike either normal children or normal and brain-damaged adults, the Ss of this study had inordinate difficulty taking diagonal routes.