Children's Spatial Knowledge of Their Home Environment

Abstract

Four empirical studies investigating children's knowledge of the large-scale environment are summarized. Such knowledge can be classified into two categories: knowledge of environmental features and knowledge about spatial relations. The former category was assessed from sketch maps and interviews, the latter by means of sketch maps and distance comparisons between land-marks in a task where children were asked to imagine the spatial layout. The organization of the home in the cognitive structure differed from that of other landmarks, suggesting that the home acts as a central reference point in the child's mental representation of the environment. This measure was positively correlated with activity range. The child's activities were further shown to facilitate the comprehension of spatial relations. Verbal reports indicated that the child's transitions were used as a structuring device for the sketch maps. Also, children referred to walks in the neighborhood when they described how they performed the distance comparison task. Through such an approach children succeeded to reconstruct relative accuracy among landmarks in a proper manner. By means of a correlational approach relations between setting use and setting knowledge were investigated. It was concluded that future studies could benefit from concentrating on how activity based representations are complemented with more generally applicable reference systems.