children getting lost: language, space, and the development of cognitive flexibility in humans
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Children Getting Lost: Language, space, and the development of cognitive flexibility in humans. Spatial Re-orientation. Human adults re-orient using both spatial and non-spatial cues Young children and animals are limited to spatial cues - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Children Getting Lost:Language, space, and the development of cognitive flexibility in humans
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Spatial Re-orientation Human adults re-orient using both spatial and
non-spatial cues Young children and animals are limited to
spatial cues Hypothesis: Use of non-spatial cues is
causally linked to the development of language production abilities
Language production ability > Non-spatial reorientation ability
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Testing Rats (Cheng, 1996) Foraging task - 3 hidden food locations
specified by odors and varying brightness throughout the cage
Cage rotated to misalign with rat’s orientation
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Testing Rats (Cheng, 1986)
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Testing Rats (Cheng 1996) Contrary to expectations, rats relied on
the 3D geometry of the cage, but NOT “non-geometric clues”
Conclusion: adult rats rely strictly on geometry for reorientation tasks
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Hermer and Spelke (1994, 1996) test human reorientation
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Adult search results Child search results
- Adult subjects utilize both geometric and non-geometric clues for reorientation
- Children utilize only geometric clues for reorientation
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Experiment 1 Designed to determine:
At what age children being performing like adults in reorientation tasks
Which cognitive mechanism(s) enable adult reorientation abilities
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Experiment 1 Prior knowledge: first purpose of this
experiment was thus to confirm that children of 3-4 years of age would fail to conjoin geometric and non-geometric information to solve this task
to test whether subjects who rely on non-geometric information in this task are truly reorienting using that information (like the rats in previous experiments)
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Experiment 1 - Purpose Prove that children aged 3-4 years will fail to
use both geometric and non-geometric clues to solve task
Prove that older children would combine clues to solve task, similar to human adults and different from young children/adult rats
Determine the age at which children use a blue wall as a landmark for direct spatial memory
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Experiment 1 - Task 8 males, 8 females between 3-4 years old 10 males, 5 females ages 5-6 Subjects are tested in a rectangular chamber
with no windows or sources of noise White noise generator Overhead camera Child gets to choose a toy to search for in this
‘game’
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Experiment 1 - Design/Results Design
Direct Landmark condition: object hidden behind fabric in a corner, child spun 5 times with eyes covered and told to search for toy
Variable: one test uses blue was as a DIRECT clue to the object’s location, an INDIRECT clue for the other test
Results: Older subjects tended to search the absolutely correct
corner Children searched geometrically appropriate locations
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Experiment 1 - Results
3-4 yrs., direct5.5-6.5 yrs., indirect
3-4 yrs., indirect5.5-6.5 yrs., direct
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Experiment 1 - Discussion Children were strikingly successful at using
non-geometric (i.e. the blue wall) information to locate a hidden object in the Direct Landmark task
Color is being used in addition to ‘left, right, across from’ etc
Prior studies showed children 3-4 years perform like young kids or ADULT RATS
Transition occurs during ages 5 to 7
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Experiment 1 - Discussion 2 groups of children put in reorientation
tasks, blue wall used as a direct cue and indirect clue
Children from 3 to 6.5 years of age consistently perceived and remembered the location of the blue wall and used its location to guide their search for the object
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Experiment 2 Test for correlation of other skill development
with flexible reorientation Dependent variable: reorientation task
performance Independent variables: age, nonverbal
intelligence, digit span, spatial memory span, reorientation performance in all-white room, comprehension/production of “left-right” and “above/behind” phrases
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Methodology 10 boys, 14 girls, mean age 5.8 years Reorientation task:
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Language production task
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Language comprehension task
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Digit/serial visuospatial span task Repeat a number series Visuospatial:
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Reorientation task results
All white room One red wall
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Reorientation task results
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Experiment 3 Correlation between mind and spoken
language To determine if children exhibit a search
pattern similar to adult rats Requires a combination of landmark and
sense information Subjects also gave language production trials Children ages 6-7 years (paid of course)
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Experiment 3 Circle of 9 plastic cups with a dwarf statue as
an inherent landmark Child watches object become hidden in cup to
landmark’s right Child’s eyes + ears covered, toy AND
landmark are moved Children expected to show ability similar to
adults rats to confine their search to the cups nearest the landmark
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Experiment 3
- Subjects are told: `He [the dwarf] likes to play a game in which you and he go into a room together, a toy is hidden, your eyes and ears are covered, and then you have to find the toy.'- After the toy is moved, the experimenter says, `Where's the toy? Go get it', and recorded the subject's subsequent search
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Experiment 3 - Results The subjects did NOT search randomly for the
object, and searched in the correct location more often than not
The 2 locations on either side of the dwarf after being moved were searched more frequently
Subjects learned to confine searches to locations next to the landmark
Resembled adults rats who searched for hidden food in proximal regions to a movable landmark array (Biegler and Morris, 1993, 1996)
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Experiment 3 - Results Error: not enough information was
gained to link language production capabilities in question with several subjects, who did not show an ability to search a location above chance
Human adults suggest LR production plays a role in moving object searches
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Conclusions Previous experiments (Hermer-Vzquez
et al., 1999) have shown that verbal interference impairs reorientation in adults Interference = “verbal shadowing”
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Conclusions Verbal abilities may increase speed,
efficiency, and combination of other skills
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Problems Failure to reproduce correlation
between LR production and performance in experiment 3 gives cause for doubt
Extremely small sample sizes Failure to clearly account for LR and
spatial differences