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Spatial working memory (WM) seems to include two types of spatial information: locations and relations. However, this distinction has been based on small-scale tasks. Here, we used a virtual navigation paradigm to examine whether WM for locations and relations applies to the largescale spatial world. We found that navigators who successfully learned two routes and also integrated them were superior at maintaining multiple locations and multiple relations in WM. However, over the entire spectrum of navigators, WM for spatial relations, but not locations, was specifically predictive of route integration performance. These results lend further support to the distinction between these two forms of spatial WM and point to their critical role in individual differences in navigation proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Individual differences in navigation stabilize at around 12 years of age. • Within-route judgements of direction stabilize before between-route judgements. • Before age 12, within-route judgements predict change in between-route judgments. • Perspective-taking and mental rotation do not predict children's navigation overtime. • Parent's small-scale spatial skills are not associated with children's navigation. Cross-sectional studies have suggested that the ability to form cognitive maps increases throughout childhood and reaches adult levels during early adolescence. However, adults show large individual differences in their ability to relate local routes to form a global map. Children also vary, but when does variation stabilize? We asked participants from a previously published cross-sectional study [ Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2018), Vol. 170, pp. 86–106] to return for a second session of testing 3 years later to examine whether longitudinal stability is more evident at older ages. The subsample of 50 of the original 105 participants available for retesting did not differ from the original sample on male–female ratio or Session 1 task performance. We reassessed performance on the Virtual Silcton navigation paradigm, the Spatial Orientation Test (SOT), and the Mental Rotation Test (MRT) and added parents' scores on the SOT and MRT at Timepoint 2. Our initial analyses of normative development aligned with prior cross-sectional findings; overall navigation performance reached adult levels of proficiency around 12 years of age. In addition, variation in route integration abilities, as measured by between-route pointing, stabilized around 12 years of age; that is, longitudinal stability was higher in the older cohort than in the younger cohort. The same pattern appeared for the MRT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developmental research beginning in the 1970s has suggested that children’s ability to form cognitive maps reaches adult levels during early adolescence. However, this research has used a variety of testing procedures, often in real-world environments, which have been difficult to share widely across labs and to use to probe components of mapping, individual differences in success, and possible mechanisms of development and reasons for individual variation. In this study, we charted the development of cognitive mapping using a virtual navigation paradigm, Silcton, that allows for testing samples of substantial size in a uniform way and in which adults show marked individual differences in the formation of accurate route representations and/or in route integration. The current study tested children aged between 8 and 16 years. In terms of components of normative development, children’s performance reached adult levels of proficiency at around age 12, but route representation progressed significantly more quickly than route integration. In terms of individual differences, by age 12 children could be grouped into the same three categories evident in adults: imprecise navigators (who form only imprecise ideas of routes), non-integrators (who represent routes more accurately but are imprecise in relating two routes), and integrators (who relate the two routes and, thus, form cognitive maps). Thus, individual differences likely originate during childhood. In terms of correlates, perspective-taking skills predicted navigation performance better than mental rotation skills, in accord with the view that perspective taking operates on extrinsic spatial representations, whereas mental rotation taps intrinsic spatial representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]