Abstract
Early in development, there is a transition in spatial working memory (SWM). When remembering a location in a homogeneous space (e.g., in a sandbox), young children are biased toward the midline symmetry axis of the space. Over development, a transition occurs that leads to older children being biased away from midline. The dynamic field theory (DFT) explains this transition in biases as being caused by a change in the precision of neural interaction in SWM and improvements in the perception of midline. According to the DFT, young children perceive midline, but there is a quantitative improvement in the perception of midline over development. In the experiment reported here, children and adults needed to determine on which half of a large monitor a target was located. In support of the DFT, even the youngest children performed above chance at most locations, but performance also improved gradually with age.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 368-376 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Journal of Experimental Child Psychology |
Volume | 107 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 2010 |
Keywords
- Development
- Dynamic systems
- Perception
- Spatial cognition
- Spatial memory
- Symmetry
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental and Educational Psychology