ABSTRACT
Our main problem, therefore, was once again to determine the relationship between the subject's memory and his schemata (positional order and orientation). If he reconstructs the model in terms of the motion of a single element and leaves that element on the same side of the ribbon from which it started, his memory will be a function of the positional order. However, if he does not understand the motion and proceeds by opposite pairs of snails, he may recall: (1) that the two left snails remained inside the loops and the two right snails outside; (2) that the two upper snails had their backs turned to each other, while the two lower ones faced each other. Hence, all he needs is to remember the four relations left/right; up/down; inside/outside and back/face, which does not seem unduly complicated. 3 In fact, however, we found that children have great difficulty in remembering this model; similarly, in our earlier study of anticipation by representative images, we found that children found it much harder to determine the positions and orientations of
an object moving across a recumbent figure 8 than one moving along an oval or circle.
