Search

External representations powerfully support and augment complex human behavior. When navigating, people often consult external representations to help them find the way to go, but do maps or verbal instructions improve spatial knowledge or support effective wayfinding? Here, we examine spatial knowledge with and without external representations in two studies where participants learn a complex virtual environment. In the first study, we asked participants to generate their own maps or verbal instructions, partway through learning. We found no evidence of improved spatial knowledge in a pointing task requiring participants to infer the direction between two targets, either on the same route or on different routes, and no differences between groups in accurately recreating a map of the target landmarks. However, as a methodological note, pointing was correlated with the accuracy of the maps that participants drew. In the second study, participants had access to an accurate map or set of verbal instructions that they could study while learning the layout of target landmarks. Again, we found no evidence of differentially improved spatial knowledge in the pointing task, although we did find that the map group could recreate a map of the target landmarks more accurately. However, overall improvement was high. There was evidence that the nature of improvement across all conditions was specific to initial navigation ability levels. Our findings add to a mixed literature on the role of external representations for navigation and suggest that more substantial intervention--more scaffolding, explicit training, enhanced visualization, perhaps with personalized sequencing--may be necessary to improve navigation ability.

Understanding and reasoning about phenomena at scales outside human perception (for example, geologic time) is critical across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Thus, devising strong methods to support acquisition of reasoning at such scales is an important goal in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. In two experiments, we examine the use of analogical principles in learning about geologic time. Across both experiments we find that using a spatial analogy (for example, a time line) to make multiple alignments, and keeping all unrelated components of the analogy held constant (for example, keep the time line the same length), leads to better understanding of the magnitude of geologic time. Effective approaches also include hierarchically and progressively aligning scale information (Experiment 1) and active prediction in making alignments paired with immediate feedback (Experiments 1 and 2).

Popular sources often assume the existence of a male advantage in navigation, but the scientificdata are inconsistent. This meta-analysis evaluates the literature on behavioral sex differences inhuman navigation. We quantify the overall magnitude of sex differences in a variety ofparadigms and populations and examine potential moderators in large-scale navigation skills,using 694 effect sizes from 266 studies and a multilevel linear modeling approach. Overall, wefound that male participants outperform female participants, with a small to medium effect size(d= 0.34 to 0.38). The type of task, the type of dependent variable and the testing environmentsignificantly contribute to variability in effect sizes. Pointing and recall tasks show larger sexdifferences than distance estimation tasks or learning to criterion; among the dependent variables, the deviation scores associated with pointing tasks show larger effect sizes. The largestestimate was d = .55 for tasks than required coordinating indoor and outdoor views.Interestingly, studies with children younger than 13 years showed very small effect sizes (d= .15) as compared to older age groups. We discuss the implications of these findings for thestudy of sex differences and identify avenues for future navigation research.

Research on spatial thinking needs reliable and valid measures of individual differences in skills.Visuospatial Perspective Taking (PT)—the ability to mentally maintain and transform spatialrelationships between objects within an environment—is one kind of spatial skill that isespecially relevant to navigation and building cognitive maps. However, the psychometricproperties of various PT tasks have yet to be examined. The present study examines three mainpsychometric properties of PT tasks: 1) the reliability of two tasks developed for children butadapted in difficulty level for use in adult populations, 2) item difficulty and discriminabilitywithin and between four tasks using item response theory, and 3) relation of scores with generalintelligence, working memory, and mental rotation. Results showed that two of the four PT taskshave promising psychometric properties for measuring a wide range of PT ability based on itemdifficulty, discriminability, and efficiency of a test information function.

Background: One criterion of adaptive learning is appropriate generalization to new instances based on the original learning context and avoiding overgeneralization. Appropriate generalization requires understanding what features of a solution are applicable in a new context and whether the new context requires modifications or a new approach. In a series of three experiments, we investigate whether searching for an algebraic formalism before receiving direct instruction facilitates appropriate generalization. Results: (1) Searching buffers against negative transfer: participants who first searched for an equation were less likely to overgeneralize compared to participants who completed a tell-and-practice activity. (2) Likelihood of creating a correct new adaptation varied by performance on the searching task. (3) Asking people to sketch alleviated some of the negative effects of tell-and-practice, but sketching did not augment the effect of searching. (4) When participants received more elaborate tell-and-practice instruction, the advantages of searching were less notable. Conclusions: Searching for an algebraic formula prior to direct instruction may be a productive way to help learners connect a formula to its referent and avoid overgeneralization. Tell-and-practice instruction that only described the mathematical procedures led to the greatest levels of overgeneralization errors and worst performance. Tell-and-practice instruction that highlighted connections between the mathematical structure of the formula and the visual referent performed at similar or marginally worse levels than the search-first conditions.

Many scientific theories and discoveries involve reasoning about extreme scales, removed from human experience, such as time in geology, size in nanoscience. Thus, understanding scale is central to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Unfortunately, novices have trouble understanding and comparing sizes of unfamiliar large and small magnitudes. Relational reasoning is a promising tool to bridge the gap between direct experience and phenomena at extreme scales. However, instruction does not always improve understanding, and analogies can fail to bring about conceptual change, and even mislead students. Here we review how people reason about phenomena across scales, in three sections: (a) we develop a framework for how relational reasoning supports understanding extreme scales; (b) we identify cognitive barriers to aligning human and extreme scales; (c) we outline a theory-based approach to teaching scale information using relational reasoning, present two successful learning activities, and consider the role of a unified scale instruction across STEM education. [At the time of submission to ERIC this article was in press with "Educational Psychology Review."]

How do toddlers learn the names of geometric forms? Previous work suggests that preschoolers have fragmentary knowledge and that defining properties are not understood until well into elementary school. The current study investigated when children first begin to understand shape names and how they apply those labels to unusual instances. We tested 25- and 30-month-old children's (N = 30 each) understanding of names for canonical shapes (commonly encountered instances, e.g., equilateral triangles), noncanonical shapes (more irregular instances, e.g., scalene triangles), and embedded shapes (shapes within a larger picture, e.g., triangular slices of pizza). At 25 months, children knew very few names, including those for canonical shapes. By 30 months, however, children had acquired more shape names and were beginning to apply them to some of the less typical instances of the shapes. Possible mechanisms driving this initial development of shape knowledge and implications of that development for school readiness are explored. [This article was published in the "Journal of Cognition and Development" (EJ1090613).]

Previous research has shown sketching to be useful tostudents solving math problems. The present studyexamines which aspects of middle school students’sketching are related to, or predict, successfullyanswering math problems. The effects of individualdifferences in cognitive factors – working memory,spatial ability, and prior math knowledge – on answeraccuracy are also analyzed. Stepwise regressionanalysis indicates that prior math knowledge and theinclusion of numerical representations of key problemrelationships in sketches positively predict answeraccuracy, whereas including irrelevant relationships ina sketch is associated with lower answer accuracy.Methodological implications for future research arediscussed.

Being able to estimate quantity is important in everyday life and for success in the STEM disciplines. However, people have difficulty reasoning about magnitudes outside of human perception (e.g., nanoseconds, geologic time). This study examines patterns of estimation errors across temporal and spatial magnitudes at large scales. We evaluated the effectiveness of hierarchical alignment in improving estimations, and transfer across dimensions. The activity was successful in increasing accuracy for temporal and spatial magnitudes, and learning transferred to the estimation of numeric magnitudes associated with events and objects. However, there were also a number of informative differences in performance on temporal, spatial, and numeric magnitude measures, suggesting that participants possess different categorical information for these scales. Educational implications are discussed.

Memory for spatial location is typically biased, with errors trending toward the center of a surrounding region. According to the category adjustment model (CAM), this bias reflects the optimal, Bayesian combination of fine-grained and categorical representations of a location. However, there is disagreement about whether categories are malleable. For instance, can categories be redefined based on expert-level conceptual knowledge? Furthermore, if expert knowledge is used, does it dominate other information sources, or is it used adaptively so as to minimize overall error, as predicted by a Bayesian framework? We address these questions using images of geological interest. The participants were experts in structural geology, organic chemistry, or English literature. Our data indicate that expertise-based categories influence estimates of location memory--particularly when these categories better constrain errors than alternative ("novice") categories. Results are discussed with respect to the CAM.

The formation of memories that contain information about the specific time and place of acquisition, which are commonly referred to as "autobiographical" or "episodic" memories, critically relies on the hippocampus and on a series of interconnected structures located in the medial temporal lobe of the mammalian brain. The observation that adults retain very few of these memories from the first years of their life has fueled a long-standing debate on whether infants can make the types of memories that in adults are processed by the hippocampus-dependent memory system, and whether the hippocampus is involved in learning and memory processes early in life. Recent evidence shows that, even at a time when its circuitry is not yet mature, the infant hippocampus is able to produce long-lasting memories. However, the ability to acquire and store such memories relies on molecular pathways and network-based activity dynamics different from the adult system, which mature with age. The mechanisms underlying the formation of hippocampus-dependent memories during infancy, and the role that experience exerts in promoting the maturation of the hippocampus-dependent memory system, remain to be understood. In this review, we discuss recent advances in our understanding of the ontogeny and the biological correlates of hippocampusdependent memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: There are several models of the use of geometric and feature cues in reorientation (Cheng, Huttenlocher, & Newcombe, ). The adaptive combination approach posits that people integrate cues with weights that depend on cue salience and learning, or, when discrepancies are large, they choose between cues based on these variables (Cheng, Shettleworth, Huttenlocher, & Rieser, ; Newcombe & Huttenlocher, ). In a new paradigm designed to evaluate integration and choice, disoriented participants attempted to return to a heading direction, in a trapezoidal enclosure in which feature and geometric cues both unambiguously specified a heading, but later the feature was moved. With discrepancies greater than 90 degrees, participants choose geometry. With smaller discrepancies, integration appeared in three of five situations; otherwise, participants used geometry alone. Variation depended on direction of feature movement and whether the nearest corner was acute or obtuse. The results have implications for contrasting adaptive combination and modularity theory, and for future research, offering a new paradigm for reorientation research, and for testing cue integration more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]