Physical Arrangement and Age as Determinants of Environmental Representation

Abstract

Age differences (comparing children 5 to 7, 8 to 10, and 1 1 to 13 years old, and adults) in experience and representation of a large-scale spatial arrangement (University Common Room) biased in an "integrated" versus a "part-quality" manner were assessed. Through verbal recall, drawings, classification, and memory reconstruction, it was found that (a) adults' representations were characterized by an integration of parts into socially relevant, meaningful wholes, whereas children produced representations consisting of groupings of isolated, fragmented parts; (b) on other criteria, 11- to 13 -year-olds were more similar to adults, whereas 8- to 10-year-olds were correspondingly more similar to 5- to 7-year-olds (e.g., whereas lito 13 -year-olds and adults, for the most part, provided bounded drawings of the environment from an aerial perspective, 5- to 7-year-olds and 8- to 10-year-olds produced unbounded drawings from multiple perspectives); and (c) even when exposed to a part-quality room arrangement, adults experienced and represented the spatial arrangement in terms of socially relevant, meaningful wholes.