Age-sensitive cognitive abilities related to children's acquisition of spatial knowledge

Two experiments were conducted to determine the extent to which developmental improvement in children's performance on tasks requiring the acquisition of spatial knowledge was related to age-sensitive cognitive abilities. The results of path analyses in Experiment 1 indicated that the relationship between age and the acquisition of landmark knowledge was, in fact, mediated by recognition-in-context memory, whereas relationships between age and route knowledge and between age and landmark judgment were unmediated. Similar analyses in Experiment 2 indicated that perceptual-motor speed mediated the relationships between age and route knowledge and between age and landmark knowledge. Again, the relationship between age and landmark judgment was unmediated. Overall, the results suggest that the approach used in these experiments can provide new insight into the relationship between spatial cognitive development as a specialized research area and cognitive development in general.

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