Route knowledge and configural knowledge in typical and atypical development: a comparison of sparse and rich environments

Abstract

BackgroundIndividuals with Down syndrome (DS) and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) have poor navigation skills, which impact their potential to become independent. Two aspects of navigation were investigated in these groups, using virtual environments (VE): route knowledge (the ability to learn the way from A to B by following a fixed sequence of turns) and configural knowledge (knowledge of the spatial relationships between places within an environment).MethodsTypically developing (TD) children aged 5 to 11 years (N = 93), individuals with DS (N = 29) and individuals with WS (N = 20) were presented with a sparse and a rich VE grid maze. Within each maze, participants were asked to learn a route from A to B and a route from A to C before being asked to find a novel shortcut from B to C.ResultsPerformance was broadly similar across sparse and rich mazes. The majority of participants were able to learn novel routes, with poorest performance in the DS group, but the ability to find a shortcut, our measure of configural knowledge, was limited for all three groups. That is, 59 % TD participants successfully found a shortcut, compared to 10 % participants with DS and 35 % participants with WS. Differences in the underlying mechanisms associated with route knowledge and configural knowledge and in the developmental trajectories of performance across groups were observed. Only the TD participants walked a shorter distance in the last shortcut trial compared to the first, indicative of increased configural knowledge across trials. The DS group often used an alternative strategy to get from B to C, summing the two taught routes together.ConclusionsOur findings demonstrate impaired configural knowledge in DS and in WS, with the strongest deficit in DS. This suggests that these groups rely on a rigid route knowledge based method for navigating and as a result are likely to get lost easily. Route knowledge was also impaired in both DS and WS groups and was related to different underlying processes across all three groups. These are discussed with reference to limitations in attention and/or visuo-spatial processing in the atypical groups.

Environment learning from virtual exploration in individuals with down syndrome: the role of perspective and sketch maps

“…Second, this argument is in line with a recent study which found that seeing a sketch map as well as listening to a description enhanced acquisition of configural knowledge, but the effect was weaker in the DS group than the TD group (Meneghetti et al ., ). It is possible, therefore, that the DS impairment in acquisition of configural knowledge (Courbois et al ., ; Farran et al ., ) is more evident under certain presentation conditions, that is, in the conditions that would enhance TD children's acquisition of configural knowledge.…”

“…In particular, individuals with DS were less able than controls to find new (i.e. not previously trained) shortcuts between two given landmarks (Courbois et al ., ; Farran et al ., ).…”

“…One could hypothesise that learning about an environment is improved when it is presented from a perspective that is consistent with the information to be acquired, for example, acquisition of survey knowledge is better when the environment is presented in survey perspective. This might not be true for individuals with DS, however, as they are known to have more difficulty than TD children in acquiring configural knowledge (Courbois et al ., ; Farran et al ., ) and in handling configural rather than sequential information (Lanfranchi et al ., ). Given that both the sketch map and survey perspective present configural spatial information, individuals with DS may be less able than TD children to acquire information in these conditions.…”

“…Few studies have examined large-scale abilities, for example, moving in a virtual environment and remembering its features (e.g. Edgin et al, 2010;Courbois et al, 2013;Davis, Merrill, Conners, & Roskos, 2014;Farran et al, 2015;Purser et al, 2015). It emerged that individuals with DS could indeed remember and retrace paths within an environment, but they needed more learning trials than TD individuals.…”

Dissociable spatial memory systems revealed by typical and atypical human development

“…Our results dovetail with previous research showing that WS individuals have difficulties navigating in large‐scale spaces and often get lost in unfamiliar environments (Farran, Blades, Boucher, & Tranter, ; Farran et al., ; Foti et al., ). Previous work has shown that WS individuals are especially impaired at place‐based spatial memory tasks (Mandolesi et al., ), but exhibit relatively intact response‐ or route‐based spatial learning (Purser et al., ; but see Farran et al., ), particularly with repeated environmental exposures (Farran, Courbois, Van Herwegen, & Blades, ; Farran et al., ). Indeed, when WS and TD individuals were tested on both place‐based and response‐based memory tasks, the WS individuals were comparatively impaired on the place‐based tasks (Bostelmann et al., ).…”