Poster #40 - The Development of Spatial Perspective Taking in Young Children

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Spatial taking perspective refers to the ability to mentally represent a viewpoint different from one’s current perspective. The present study investigated how well young children take self (egocentric) or other’s perspective and the development differences between the two perspectives among young children. We tested 80 children by a modified paradigm of classical spatial perspective-taking task, including 5-year-olds (N=27), 6-year-olds (N=27) and 7-year-olds (N=26). There were two conditions. In one condition (other agency), there was another child actor sitting on one chair and the participants needed to recognize the target scene from this child actor's perspective (take other’s perspective). The target scene was a layout showing on a table that consists of single or multiple objects varying their positions or orientations at each trial. In another condition (self agency), there was an empty chair. Participants were instructed to imagine themselves sitting on that chair and recognize the target scene (take self-perspective). The chair was placed in different orientations from the participant. We manipulated the orientation disparity (0°, 90° and 180°) and layout complexity (single object, two objects and multiple objects) to explore their effects on spatial perspective taking performance. The verbal IQ and inhibition control ability were also measured as control variables. The results showed that the spatial perspective-taking performance improved as a function of age. Performance decreased with the increasing orientation disparity and layout complexity for all age groups. The performance of 0° trials were equal for all age groups, while for 90° and 180° trials, 7-year-olds performed significantly better than 5-and 6-year-olds. The spatial perspective-taking performance positively correlated with children’s inhibition control ability, while it did not do so with the verbal IQ. There was an interaction between age group and two agencies. Five-year-olds performed better in self-agency condition than other agency condition, while 6-year-olds did not show the effect of agencies. However, more importantly, a significant interaction between agency and orientation disparity suggests that 6-year-olds performed equally in self-agency condition and other agency condition in small disparities (0°, 90°), while they showed an advantage of self-agency with large disparity (180°). For 7-year-olds, there were no significant differences between self and other agency in all conditions. The above results suggested that even 5-year-olds could recognize the target scene from different orientations based on an egocentric perspective, while it is difficult for younger children to manipulate mental representation of layouts from other person’s perspective, especially with large orientation disparity. Unlike previous research proposes that less-developed spatial perspective-taking ability with younger children, the present study indicates that younger children may have been capable of recognizing spatial scenes from different orientations. However, this ability is impacted by the ability to adopt another person's perspective. The present findings provide valuable information for understanding the development of spatial perspective taking ability of young children.

Authors

• Weijia Li, Sun Yat-Sen University
  Presenting Author

• Qi Wang, Sun Yat-Sen University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yingying Yang, Montclair State University
  Non-Presenting Author