Reorientation and Landmark-Guided Search by Young Children
Authors:
- 1 July 2006
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Psychological Science
- Vol. 17 (7) , 577-582
Abstract
Disoriented 4-year-old children use a distinctive container to locate a hidden object, but do they reorient by this information? We addressed this question by testing children's search for objects in a circular room containing one distinctive and two identical containers. Children's search patterns provided evidence that the distinctive container served as a direct cue to a hidden object's location, but not as a directional signal guiding reorientation. The findings suggest that disoriented children's search behavior depends on two distinct processes: a modular reorientation process attuned to the geometry of the surface layout and an associative process linking landmarks to specific locations.Keywords
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