Route learning and shortcut performance in adults with intellectual disability: a study with virtual environments

The ability to learn routes though a virtual environment (VE) and to make a novel shortcut between two locations was assessed in 18 adults with intellectual disability and 18 adults without intellectual disability matched on chronological age. Participants explored two routes (A ⇔ B and A ⇔ C) until they reached a learning criterion. Then, they were placed at B and were asked to find the shortest way to C (B ⇔ C, five trials). Participants in both groups could learn the routes, but most of the participants with intellectual disability could not find the shortest route between B and C. However, the results also revealed important individual differences within the intellectual disability group, with some participants exhibiting more efficient wayfinding behaviour than others. Individuals with intellectual disability may differ in the kind of spatial knowledge they extract from the environment and/or in the strategy they use to learn routes

Using virtual environments to investigate wayfinding in 8- to 12-year-olds and adults

Wayfinding is the ability to learn and recall a route through an environment. Theories of wayfinding suggest that for children to learn a route successfully, they must have repeated experience of it, but in this experiment we investigated whether children could learn a route after only a single experience of the route. A total of 80 participants from the United Kingdom in four groups of 20 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and adults were shown a route through a 12-turn maze in a virtual environment. At each junction, there was a unique object that could be used as a landmark. Participants were ‘‘walked” along the route just once (without any verbal prompts) and then were asked to retrace the route from the start without any help. Nearly three quarters of the 12-year-olds, half of the 10-year-olds, and a third of the 8-year-olds retraced the route without any errors the first time they traveled it on their own. This finding suggests that many young children can learn routes, even with as many as 12 turns, very quickly and without the need for repeated experience. The implications for theories of wayfinding that emphasize the need for extensive experience are discussed

Spatial Cognition in Children With Physical Disability; What Is the Impact of Restricted Independent Exploration?

Given the developmental inter-relationship between motor ability and spatial skills, we investigated the impact of physical disability (PD) on spatial cognition. Fifty-three children with special educational needs including PD were divided into those who were wheelchair users (n = 34) and those with independent locomotion ability (n = 19). This division additionally enabled us to determine the impact of limited independent physical exploration (i.e., required wheelchair use) on spatial competence. We compared the spatial performance of children in these two PD groups to that of typically developing (TD) children who spanned the range of non-verbal ability of the PD groups. Participants completed three spatial tasks; a mental rotation task, a spatial programming task and a desktop virtual reality (VR) navigation task. Levels of impairment of the PD groups were broadly commensurate with their overall level of non-verbal ability. The exception to this was the performance of the PD wheelchair group on the mental rotation task, which was below that expected for their level of non-verbal ability. Group differences in approach to the spatial programming task were evident in that both PD groups showed a different error pattern from the TD group. These findings suggested that for children with both learning difficulties and PD, the unique developmental impact on spatial ability of having physical disabilities, over and above the impact of any learning difficulties, is minimal

Encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment

Wayfinding is defined as the ability to learn and remember a route through an environment. Previous researchers have shown that young children have difficulties remembering routes. However, very few researchers have considered how to improve young children’s wayfinding abilities. Therefore, we investigated ways to help children increase their wayfinding skills. In two studies, a total of 72 5-year olds were shown a route in a six turn maze in a virtual environment and were then asked to retrace this route by themselves. A unique landmark was positioned at each junction and each junction was made up of two paths: a correct path and an incorrect path. Two different strategies improved route learning performance. In Experiment 1, verbally labeling on-route junction landmarks during the first walk reduced the number of errors and the number of trials to reach a learning criterion when the children retraced the route. In Experiment 2, encouraging children to attend to on-route junction landmarks on the first walk reduced the number of errors when the route was retraced. This was the first study to show that very young children can be taught route learning skills. The implications of our results are discusse

The development of wayfinding abilities in children: Learning routes with and without landmarks

Young children experience wayfinding difficulties. A better understanding of the development of wayfinding abilities may inform strategies that can be used to improve these skills in children. The ability to learn and remember a route was assessed in 220 6-, 8-, and 10-year old children and adults. Participants were shown a route in a virtual environment, before they were asked to retrace this route until they had achieved two consecutive trials without error. The virtual environment contained (i) no landmarks (ii) landmarks or (iii) landmarks that were verbally labelled. Adults, 10-year-olds and most 8-year-olds learnt the route when landmarks were present, but not all the 6-year-olds were successful. All age groups of children improved when the landmarks were labelled. Children were much poorer when there were no landmarks. This is the first study to distinguish between route learning dependent on landmarks, and route learning without landmarks (i.e. dependent on directions)

Using virtual environments to investigate wayfinding in 8- to 12-year-olds and adults

Wayfinding is the ability to learn and recall a route through an environment. Theories of wayfinding suggest that for children to learn a route successfully, they must have repeated experience of it, but in this experiment we investigated whether children could learn a route after only a single experience of the route. A total of 80 participants from the United Kingdom in four groups of 20 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and adults were shown a route through a 12-turn maze in a virtual environment. At each junction, there was a unique object that could be used as a land- mark. Participants were ‘‘walked” along the route just once (with- out any verbal prompts) and then were asked to retrace the route from the start without any help. Nearly three quarters of the 12- year-olds, half of the 10-year-olds, and a third of the 8-year-olds retraced the route without any errors the first time they traveled it on their own. This finding suggests that many young children can learn routes, even with as many as 12 turns, very quickly and without the need for repeated experience. The implications for theories of wayfinding that emphasize the need for extensive experience are discussed

Route knowledge and configural knowledge in typical and atypical development: a comparison of sparse and rich environments

Background: Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) have poor navigation skills, which impact their potential to become independent. Two aspects of navigation were investigated in these groups, using virtual environments (VE): route knowledge (the ability to learn the way from A to B by following a fixed sequence of turns) and configural knowledge (knowledge of the spatial relationships between places within an environment). Methods: Typically developing (TD) children aged 5 to 11 years (N = 93), individuals with DS (N = 29) and individuals with WS (N = 20) were presented with a sparse and a rich VE grid maze. Within each maze, participants were asked to learn a route from A to B and a route from A to C before being asked to find a novel shortcut from B to C. Results: Performance was broadly similar across sparse and rich mazes. The majority of participants were able to learn novel routes, with poorest performance in the DS group, but the ability to find a shortcut, our measure of configural knowledge, was limited for all three groups. That is, 59 % TD participants successfully found a shortcut, compared to 10 % participants with DS and 35 % participants with WS. Differences in the underlying mechanisms associated with route knowledge and configural knowledge and in the developmental trajectories of performance across groups were observed. Only the TD participants walked a shorter distance in the last shortcut trial compared to the first, indicative of increased configural knowledge across trials. The DS group often used an alternative strategy to get from B to C, summing the two taught routes together. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate impaired configural knowledge in DS and in WS, with the strongest deficit in DS. This suggests that these groups rely on a rigid route knowledge based method for navigating and as a result are likely to get lost easily. Route knowledge was also impaired in both DS and WS groups and was related to different underlying processes across all three groups. These are discussed with reference to limitations in attention and/or visuo-spatial processing in the atypical groups

« Rotation mentale », détermination d'un système de référence et erreurs de transformation : une étude développementale

Summary : « Mental rotation », determination of a reference system and errors of transformation : A developmental research In a classical mental rotation task, the subject has to define a reference system before carrying out the mental transformation. Any mistake in the determination of this system results in an error in the kind of transformation that is imagined. In the present experiment, vue tested the hypothesis that the ability to define reference systems increased with age. We analysed the number of transformation errors mode by 6- and 10-year-old children in two mental rotation tasks, using stimuli with and without salient axis (Courbois, 2000). Results showed that these errors only occurred when the stimuli had no salient axis, and that the number of these errors decreased significantly with age. Key words : developmental psychology, mental rotation task, transformation errors.Résumé Pour résoudre un problème qui met en œuvre la rotation mentale, il est nécessaire d'organiser la figure à transformer à partir d'un système de référence. Une confusion dans la définition de ce système entraîne une erreur dans la transformation opérée. Cette recherche teste l'hypothèse selon laquelle la capacité de définir un système de référence évolue avec l'âge. L'analyse porte sur le nombre d'erreurs de transformation réalisées par des enfants de 6 et 10 ans soumis à des épreuves de rotation mentale portant sur des figures avec ou sans axe saillant (Courbois, 2000). Les résultats montrent que les erreurs de transformation sont spécifiques aux figures sans axe saillant, et que leur nombre diminue fortement avec l'âge. Mots clés : psychologie du développement, rotation mentale, erreurs de transformationCourbois Yannick. « Rotation mentale », détermination d'un système de référence et erreurs de transformation : une étude développementale. In: L'année psychologique. 2005 vol. 105, n°1. pp. 47-62

III - Retard mental et coordination des perspectives spatiales

A classical perspective taking task and a modified one (Borkes, 1974) were administered to two groups of nonretarded children (8 year old and 5 year old) and two groups of teenagers with mental retardation ( cultural/ familial and organic). Results from the classical task revealed a low level of development in teenagers with mental retardation who performed much lower than nonretarded children with comparable mental age (eight-year-olds). These new data about spatial perspective taking are not congruent with the similar structure hypothesis (Zigler, 1982).Deux groupes d'enfants non retardés (8 et 5 ans) et deux groupes d'adolescents retardés mentaux (culturels/familiaux et organiques) ont été soumis à une épreuve classique de coordination des perspectives spatiales et une épreuve modifiée (Borkes, 1975). Les résultats à l'épreuve classique révèlent un important retard de développement des adolescents retardés mentaux, qui ont un niveau de performance nettement inférieur à celui des enfants non retardés d'âge mental équivalent (enfants de 8 ans). Ces nouvelles données sur la coordination des perspectives spatiales ne sont pas compatibles avec l'hypothèse de la structure similaire (similar structure hypothesis : Zigler, 1982).Courbois Yanick. III - Retard mental et coordination des perspectives spatiales. In: Enfance, n°1, 1996. pp. 51-64