Strategic Alternatives

1
Kosslyn, S.M., Pick, H.L., Fariello, G.R.
Cognitive Maps in Children and Men. Child
Development, 1974, 45.

• Theory/Objective
• Explore relative accuracy of cognitive maps
• Explore what guides spatial representation
  physical distance vs functional distance vs
  visible distance
• If physical, presence of barrier will not
  influence cognitive mapping
• If functional, barrier may influence perceived
  distance between objects
• If visible, expect having an opaque barrier (as
  opposed to transparent or no barrier) will
  distort perceived distance
• Methodology
• 28 participants 14 preschoolers (4-1 to 5-5)
  14 adults (18-26yrs)
• 4-part experiment (17-ft square space, 4
  quadrants, 10 objects)

Key Insight

• Strengths
• Acknowledge barriers might have caused
  organization of visual percepts in memory
• Looks at child vs adult
• Weaknesses
• Experiment explores too much
• Not sure how they chose age groups
• Test not designed appropriately for two
  different age groups
• Not enough subjects for tw1o age groups.
  Subjects not greatest sample
• Do not describe whether square has 4 walls, or
  just 1
• No description of toys used (are they the same
  size? Same type?)

• Findings
• Subjects made systematic distance judgments from
  location to location, which supports theory of
  cognitive mapping (distortions were not random)
• For ADULTS, visible distance seems most
  important good at integrating adjacent visible
  quadrants, opaque barriers lead to augmented
  distortion of distance
• For CHILDREN, functional distance seems most
  important not able to integrate quadrants,
  equivalent effects of both types of barriers
  (increasing distance)