Spatial exploration strategies in childhood; exploration behaviours are predictive of navigation success

Farran, Emily K.; Blades, Mark; Hudson, Kerry; Sockeel, Pascal; Courbois, Yannick

doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101153

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 42 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In rodents, for example, active exploration produces stronger hippocampal place cell firing (Song et al, 2005) and better coding of spatial information in place cells (Terrazas et al, 2005). In humans, higher levels of spatial exploration have been associated with more accurate cognitive maps (Brunec et al, 2022;Chrastil & Warren, 2012;Farran et al, 2022;Gagnon et al, 2016;Munion et al, 2019). Complementing these findings, by showing that spatial exploration is driven by the level of state curiosity, our results implicated an important potential role of curiosity in building cognitive maps, supporting the proposition that curiosity is a major motivator for driving information incorporation into cognitive maps (O' Keefe & Nadel, 1978).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curiosity shapes spatial exploration and cognitive map formation in humans

Cen¹,

Hodgetts²,

Gruber³

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Exploration of novel environments is key to building cognitive maps across species. While influential theories have highlighted curiosity as one of the primary drivers of exploratory behaviour, the relationship between curiosity and human spatial exploration is unknown. To address this, we designed a virtual reality paradigm in which participants rated their curiosity before - and interest after - exploring novel rooms (i.e., pre-room curiosity vs. post-room interest). We indexed the complexity of exploratory behaviour using roaming entropy for both spatial and head-direction movement. Our findings revealed a double dissociation, whereby pre-room curiosity states were associated with the magnitude of path roaming entropy (spatial exploration), and post-room interest states were associated with the magnitude of head-direction roaming entropy (visual exploration). These results provide novel evidence for a direct link between subjective feelings of curiosity and different facets of exploratory behaviour, providing insights into how curiosity motivates the formation of cognitive maps.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curiosity shapes spatial exploration and cognitive map formation in humans

Cen¹,

Hodgetts²,

Gruber³

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Most often with desktop VR displays and virtual mazes, studies examined landmark, route, and survey knowledge acquisition at different ages (Broadbent et al, 2015;Jansen-Osmann & Fuchs, 2006;Jansen-Osmann et al, 2007;Lingwood et al, 2015;Nazareth et al, 2018;Nys et al, 2015). These studies found that landmarks aid route learning more for younger children versus older children and adults (Lingwood et al, 2015), that environmental structure affects young children's wayfinding more than older children (Jansen-Osmann et al, 2007), and that younger children explore environments differently when allowed to freely explore (Farran et al, 2022;Jansen-Osmann & Fuchs, 2006;Jansen-Osmann et al, 2007). Farran et al (2022) showed that exploration patterns in 5-11 year olds for a fairly realistic virtual city become more "active" with increasing age (visiting more of the environment, revisiting similar areas and pausing less often) and this exploration pattern related to navigational success (time to find targets and return home).…”

Section: Age Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual Reality as a Tool to Understand Spatial Navigation

Creem-Regehr¹,

Kelly²,

Bodenheimer³

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Spatial navigation, the ability to explore, learn, and remember one’s environment, is a skill that is fundamental to everyday goals. Navigation is challenging to study because it requires understanding and integrating multiple sources of information from the environment and the body as well as many cognitive processes including perception, attention, memory, and decision making. Virtual Reality (VR), the presentation and experience of a synthetic sensory environment, provides a method to study spatial navigation in controlled, ecologically valid, and innovative ways. In this review, we describe VR as a tool to study spatial navigation with the perspective that basic science questions and applications mutually inform one another. We focus on how VR has advanced an understanding of the spatial cues, spatial knowledge, and individual differences involved in spatial navigation and discuss the role and implications of different VR technologies that allow for these investigations.

show abstract

“…City . This instrument was developed by Farran and colleagues and consists of a virtual city (300 × 300 virtual unity), delimited by four walls and containing 10 buildings of different sizes [ 49 ]. These are coincident or non-coincident proximal cues , while outside the three delimitating walls there are three distal cues .…”

Section: Apparatus/instrumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regarding small space and large space, the children’s favorite strategy was an egocentric one, while an allocentric strategy was used only when they were forced [ 40 ]. Eventually, the exploration of 6-year-old children was not organized, as was demonstrated by the fact that they took a lot of pauses, their trajectory was random, and their efficiency was low [ 49 ]. In reaching space, the pattern was completely different; in fact, in a study where a tabletop maze was used, 6-year-old children based their performance on allocentric representations of the surrounding room [ 44 , 60 ].…”

Section: Development Of Spatial Abilities In the Range Of 6–12 Yearsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Particularly, when landmarks were removed, children used metric information, the last step for improving navigation abilities, although they still committed a few errors in layout recognition based on metric information [ 13 ]. According to Farran and colleagues, the exploration of large space by 9-year-old children was very efficient compared to younger children aged 5 to 8, with a lower number of pauses and shorter paths when environments were learned [ 49 ].…”

Section: Development Of Spatial Abilities In the Range Of 6–12 Yearsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Development of Human Navigation in Middle Childhood: A Narrative Review through Methods, Terminology, and Fundamental Stages

Pullano

Foti

2022

Brain Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Spatial orientation and navigation are fundamental abilities in daily life that develop gradually during childhood, although their development is still not clear. The main aim of the present narrative review was to trace the development of navigational skills in middle childhood (6 to 12 years old) by means of studies present in the literature. To this aim, this review took into account the terminology, methodologies, different paradigms, and apparatuses used to investigate egocentric self-centered and allocentric world-centered representations, besides the different types of spaces (reaching/small/large; physical/virtual). Furthermore, this review provided a brief description of the development of navigational strategies and competences in toddlers and preschool children (0–5 years). The main result of this review showed how middle childhood is a crucial period for the improvement and development of allocentric strategies, including metric information. In fact, during this developmental window, children learn to handle proximal and distal cues, to transpose paper and virtual information into real environments, up to performing similarly to adults. This narrative review could represent a starting point to better clarify the development of navigation and spatial orientation, finalized to trace a development curve useful to map normal development and to have a term of comparison to assess performance in atypical development.

show abstract

Spatial exploration strategies in childhood; exploration behaviours are predictive of navigation success

Cited by 13 publications

References 42 publications

Curiosity shapes spatial exploration and cognitive map formation in humans

Curiosity shapes spatial exploration and cognitive map formation in humans

Virtual Reality as a Tool to Understand Spatial Navigation

The Development of Human Navigation in Middle Childhood: A Narrative Review through Methods, Terminology, and Fundamental Stages

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About