Children’s Strategies for Linking Real-World Maps to Real-World Environments

• In Event: 3-135 - Understanding Spatial Processes: Spatial Behavior in Real Time and in Real-World Settings

Integrative Statement

The scope and challenges of human spatial environments vary with ontogenetic development. As discussed by Speaker 1, spatial challenges and behaviors of infants and toddlers often concern objects in, and characteristics of, small, nearby spaces. With increasingly advanced cognitive and motor skills, children and youth engage with larger, more complex spatial environments such as parks, friends’ neighborhoods, and shopping malls. Speakers 3 and 4 consider parental and community contexts in which children experience such spaces under supervision or independently. The current presentation examines children’s use of maps in novel spaces that are too large and complex to be seen and understood from a single vantage point.

Past research shows that 3-year-olds appreciate basic stand-for connections between simple graphics and simple laboratory spaces. However, past research also shows that older children—and even many adults—have difficulty using what might be called natural or real-world maps representing equally natural or real-world environments. In keeping with the symposium’s goal of illuminating processes, I draw from earlier and current research to address spatial processes relevant to ecological map use.

In our prototypical research paradigm, we invite 8-to-10-year-old children to visit a section of a college campus, show them their location on a plan map, ask them to walk around the area, and tell them that whenever they find a colored flag, to mark its location on the map with a colored sticker. We (a) observe children’s physical map actions while the child walks (tracing the route on the map; rotating the map) or while placing stickers (aligning the map with the environment); (b) examine sticker-error patterns to infer reasoning strategies; and (c) ask children directly about their strategies.

This presentation will focus on two recent studies of map actions by 9-to-10-year-olds. In one, children (N=52) received either standard instructions or alignment instructions explaining that many people find it easier to use maps if they make the map “go the same way as the space.” Children in the alignment condition displayed more map actions (e.g., more frequently rotating the map while walking). However, their sticker placements were no more accurate. In the second, children (N=58) were asked to link map stickers and the real space under either a map-production condition (placing stickers on the map to mark flags’ locations) or map-comprehension condition (placing flags at campus locations indicated by stickers on the map). The latter task elicited more map actions, which led to better location-accuracy scores.

Previous research had established that children who spontaneously engage in more map actions identify map locations more accurately. Yet, the increased map actions observed in the current studies yielded greater location accuracy only in Study 2. Perhaps children in Study 1 who were externally prompted to modify their real-time map actions did not benefit because they had not yet developed the general projective spatial concepts that underlie an understanding of map-space alignment (physical or mental). Projects are underway to test the effectiveness of interventions that target generalized spatial concepts prior to providing more specific strategy instructions

Author

• Lynn S Liben, Penn State
  Presenting Author