Spatial cognition
Do children remember a route better if they plan it themselves?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Children who drew their own route across a map remembered its length and shape more accurately than children who traced someone else's identical route, but they were no better at remembering the characters and objects they met along the way.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Between-subjects yoked design: Active children drew their own route on a map; Yoked children traced the route a previous Active child had drawn, then both groups did spatial and episodic memory tests
- N
- N=105 · 105 children aged 4-10 years after 14 exclusions, split between Active and Yoked conditions
- Population
- Children aged 4 to 10 recruited in daycare centres and public parks in Italy
- Outcome
- Spatial memory (error in recalled path length, number of corners, area between drawn and recalled paths) and episodic memory (objects recalled, monster friends recognized)
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Key findings
Active children's remembered routes were closer to the original in length (about 9.58 segments off versus 12.85 for Yoked children) and in overall layout (an area of about 48.68 grid cells between paths versus 56.75). Memory for the number of corners did not differ significantly between conditions, although it improved with age. Episodic memory was unaffected: both groups recalled about the same number of objects (3.36 vs 3.31) and recognized a similar number of monsters. Older children drew routes with fewer corners, suggesting a less segmented navigation strategy.
Methodology
In a map game, 105 children aged 4 to 10 helped a monster cross town by the shortest path while picking up five monster friends, each carrying an object. Children in the Active condition drew the route themselves; children in the Yoked condition moved a toy car along a route that a previous Active child had drawn, so both groups saw the same information. Afterwards, children redrew the route from memory on a blank map, picked out the monster friends among distractors and recalled the objects they carried.
Limitations
The condition effects were small and some were close to the significance threshold, and the study was not preregistered, so replication would help. The task is a simple paper map rather than real or virtual movement through space, so it is unclear how well it maps onto real-world navigation. Active children also held a marker and made decisions while Yoked children used a toy car, so the conditions differed in more than control alone. The null result for episodic memory may reflect a fairly unengaging object task, as the authors note, rather than a true absence of benefit.
How this study connects
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