The present study shows that children's spatial encoding depends on whether an element of the array is located on their near-far axis or on their side. Five to six yearold children were told to reconstruct a display of three objects after turning their bodies around. In Experiment 1 they were presented with a large array, each element of which was close enough to the surroundings. Many of the subjects made a mirror -image response: They reversed left and right while did not reverse the spatial relation on the near-far axis. In Experiment 2, one object of the array was replaced with a small array consisting of two objects arranged left and right. Children reversed the left-right relation of the small array when it was located on their left (or right) side, while they did not reverse the relation when the small array was located on their near -far axis. It was argued that the mechanism of children's use of a different reference frame in making one response needed further research.