TY - JOUR

T1 - Conditions for Successful Performance by 4-Year-Olds in a Dimensional Coordination Task

AU - Bremner, J. G.

AU - Andreasen, G.

AU - Kendall, G.

AU - Adams, L

PY - 1993

Y1 - 1993

N2 - Piaget and Inhelder (1956) claimed that children were unable to coordinate orthogonal spatial dimensions until the age of 8 or 9 years. Recent evidence, however, suggests that this ability begins to develop much earlier, at around 4 years, although it is not clear how well established the ability is at this age. The current study uses a variety of search tasks to investigate the conditions for success at this age. Four-year-olds who have to find an object by coordinating markers in orthogonal dimensions perform reasonably well if the task is set in a meaningful context in which orthogonal dimensions are cued by the imagined walked paths of two model people. Performance is particularly good when two imagined lines-of-sight are the dimensions to be coordinated and is superior to performance when explicit linear dimensions are provided by arrows. Additionally, performance under the line-of-sight-condition but not under the arrow condition carries over to a baseline condition in which no explicit or implicit linear cues are provided. These results are in keeping with the notion that young children perform better when tasks are set in a meaningful context and are also of interest in relation to the literature on children′s theory of mind through their indication that lines of sight can be both attributed to others and used very effectively in a spatial task.

AB - Piaget and Inhelder (1956) claimed that children were unable to coordinate orthogonal spatial dimensions until the age of 8 or 9 years. Recent evidence, however, suggests that this ability begins to develop much earlier, at around 4 years, although it is not clear how well established the ability is at this age. The current study uses a variety of search tasks to investigate the conditions for success at this age. Four-year-olds who have to find an object by coordinating markers in orthogonal dimensions perform reasonably well if the task is set in a meaningful context in which orthogonal dimensions are cued by the imagined walked paths of two model people. Performance is particularly good when two imagined lines-of-sight are the dimensions to be coordinated and is superior to performance when explicit linear dimensions are provided by arrows. Additionally, performance under the line-of-sight-condition but not under the arrow condition carries over to a baseline condition in which no explicit or implicit linear cues are provided. These results are in keeping with the notion that young children perform better when tasks are set in a meaningful context and are also of interest in relation to the literature on children′s theory of mind through their indication that lines of sight can be both attributed to others and used very effectively in a spatial task.

U2 - 10.1006/jecp.1993.1030

DO - 10.1006/jecp.1993.1030

M3 - Journal article

VL - 56

SP - 149

EP - 172

JO - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

JF - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

IS - 2

ER -