Collaborative Research: The Development of Spatial Coding

人类，像世界上所有的生物一样，必须记住物体和目标的位置，才能成功地生活。与其他生物不同，人类可以通过象征性和直接经验来了解位置。这个研究项目的目标是了解空间能力的发展。最近的研究表明，许多空间技能的发展比迄今为止所认为的要早。然而，早期的成功可能反映了与成熟的编码不同的简单过程的使用，而不是天生的空间能力规范。将进行三套研究来解决这个一般性问题。在一项工作中，重点是根据婴儿对事件的注视时间推断婴儿位置编码的本质。在第二项工作中，其目的是评估最近的一项主张，即儿童在寻找隐藏物体时显示出先天指定的“几何模块”的证据。第三项工作将检查儿童如何使用简单地图找到隐藏的物体。从理论上讲，寻找空间发展中发展转变的证据以及强大的初始起点是很重要的，因为它为生物规范和环境相互作用相互作用产生发展的观点提供了支持。在实践中，对这种立场的支持表明，某些环境经验可能是正常发展所必需的，甚至可以被操纵以实现最佳发展。

Human beings, like all organisms that move in the world, must rememberthe location of objects and goals in order to live successfully. Unlikeother organisms, human beings can learn about locations bothsymbolically and through direct experience. The goal of this researchprogram is to understand the development of spatial competence.Recent work has shown that many spatial skills arise earlier indevelopment than had hitherto been supposed. However, early success mayreflect the use of simple processes, different from mature coding,rather than innate specification of spatial competence. Three sets ofstudies will be carried out to address this general issue. In one lineof work, the focus is on the nature of infant location coding asinferred from their looking times to events. In a second line of work,the aim is to evaluate a recent claim that children show evidence of aninnately-specified "geometric module" in their searches for hiddenobjects. The third line of work will examine how children use simplemaps to find hidden objects.Finding evidence for developmental transformations in spatialdevelopment as well as for strong initial starting points is importanttheoretically, as it provides support for a position in which biologicalspecification and environmental interaction interact to producedevelopment. In practical terms, support for such a position wouldindicate that certain environmental experiences may be necessary fornormal development, and could even be manipulated to allow optimaldevelopment.