Place Recognition and Way Finding by Children and Adults
Edward H. Cornell, C. Donald Heth, and Denise M. Alberts
Department of Psychology, University of Alberta
Abstract
Children and adults were escorted on their first walk across our university
campus and were periodically led off the original route during the return
trip. During the return, we stopped prior to intersections on and off the
original route to obtain estimates of place recognition accuracy and confidence.
The participants were then asked to point to the path that led back to
the start and were corrected if wrong. Accuracy of place recognition was
intermediate in a way-finding task requiring reversal of an incidentally
learned novel route. However, accuracy increased as participants were farther
from the original route, indicating that the presence of novel landmarks
boosted the discrimination of old and new places. Eight-year-old children
were less accurate than 12-year-old children and 25-year-old adults, who
did not differ in accuracy. There was a similar age difference in the ability
to point to the direction to return when participants correctly recognized
that they were off route. The results are used to develop a model of way
finding by place recognition.