Abstract
Recent studies have suggested that spatial localization by young children is disturbed when there is a mismatch between encoding and retrieval perspectives. Experiment 1 examined the ability of 2 and 3 year olds to find a hidden object after having inspected the spatial layout from various viewpoints. Specifically, after looking down on an array of four locations, children either made a 0- or 180-degree movement around the array and then searched for a hidden object from either above or aside the array.Theresults showed that 3 year olds could compensate for both vertical and horizontal displacements, while 2 year olds only had the ability of spatial memory. In Experiment 2, those children who could memorize the layout in Experiment 1 were tested for the effect of a 90-degree movement, to examine their strategies for spatial localization after movement. There were significantly more errors for the 90-degree movement condition than for the 180-degree movement. The results suggest that the strategy used by children was dimension-coordination rather than visual-image manipulation.
