To Cue or Not to Cue: Toddlers’ Use of Beacons and Associative Cues in Object‐displacement Tasks

Abstract

Two experiments examined 24‐ and 30‐month‐olds' use of different forms of landmark information in an object‐displacement task involving a car rolling down a ramp whose trajectory was occluded by a screen containing doors. A pompom attached to the car, visible through a transparent window running across the screen, served as a cue for the car's location and functioned either as a beacon cue, directly guiding search to a given location, or an associative cue, indirectly marking target location. Interestingly, one way in which the cue information was modified from a beacon to an associative cue was in terms of the structure of the search apparatus, and not necessarily the cue information itself. Consistent with previous literature, 24‐month‐olds' search was significantly influenced by the shift from beacon to associative cue information, whereas 30‐month‐olds, although affected by the shift from one to the other, were less affected by this variation. These findings suggest that the cue drives attention to specific locations in space, with search behavior being more accurate when the cue directly marks the hiding location (i.e., beacon) than when the cue indirectly marks it (i.e., associative cue).