ABSTRACT

Chapter 8 looks at the child’s spatial cognition. It first considers egocentric and allocentric spatial coding by children and discusses their landmark use in comparison with response learning based on sensorimotor actions. It next looks at the characteristics of children’s spatial knowledge or cognitive maps, whether tied to the sequence of landmarks or allocentrically configured. Then, the chapter discusses the encoding of distance and direction by children and also their use of the geometry of space (i.e., the shape of a room) in spatial orientation. It then considers children’s use and understanding of symbolic spatial representations including maps and scale models. The chapter concludes with a discussion of staircase and overlapping waves metaphors of children’s cognitive development.