Developmental differences in the ability to give route directions from a map

Abstract The ability to give accurate route directions is an important way of expressing environmental information, but the development of this ability has received little attention, therefore an experiment was designed to assess how children and adults gave route directions from a map. In an extension of a previous, small scale, experiment ( Brewster & Blades, 1989 Journal of Environmental Education and Information, 8, 141–156). Four groups of children (aged 6, 8, 10, and 12 years) and one group of adults described two routes from maps and the route descriptions were assessed for both their accuracy and content. The six and eight year olds were unable to give correct route directions, but a few of the ten year olds and many of the 12 year old children were able to provide directions for most of the route, and all the adults gave accurate route descriptions from the maps. Analyses were carried out on the content of the descriptions, the effect of the presence of landmarks at turns on the route, and the effects of direction of travel when approaching turns. The main finding was a major developmental contrast in the style and content of the descriptions: the younger children relied predominantly on landmarks and vague indications of direction; the older children and adults included information about the type of road junction at the turn and about the road sequence (e.g. ‘first left’, ‘second right’). The implications of the results for further research are discussed.