Categorical and spatial modes of representation in young children's recall

Effects of spatial arrangement on 4- and 6-yr.-old children's memory

This research is an investigation of the effects of different spatial arrangements of the same items on 4- and 6-yr.-old children's memory. The items were arranged in one of three ways, put in a random order, grouped into categories, or displayed in a configuration reproducing a real-world scene. Each subject was asked both to recall the items verbally and to remember their spatial locations. The results show that only 6-yr.-olds' memory for locations is enhanced by meaningful arrangements of objects in space. It is suggested that there is a developmental gap between memory for "raw" spatial relationships ("locational" cognitive mapping) and memory for spatial relationships which also takes into account the meaning of these relations ("relational" cognitive mapping). Furthermore, for 6-yr.-olds clustering of recall is categorically organized in all conditions. For 4-yr.-olds such clustering appears to reproduce the spatial arrangement of items in a scene, while recall is categorically organized in both categorical and random conditions.