The acquisition and integration of route knowledge in an unfamiliar neighborhood

Abstract

This paper investigates the acquisition of neighborhood route knowledge by children of ages 9–12. Subjects were exposed to two routes through an unfamiliar suburban neighborhood, with five learning trials undertaken on each route. One route was acquired by actual field experience, while the other was acquired by viewing a video tape. Route knowledge acquisition was tested by performance on navigation, sketch mapping, and scene recognition tasks. Mode of experience had little effect on recognition performance; however, navigation performance following five video trials was inferior and approximated that of children with only one trial of field experience. These data support the differentiation of knowledge types and the need to engage in route navigation to proceduralize such knowledge.