Developmental changes in the mental transformation of spatial arrays.

An experiment was conducted to investigate the spatial memory and transformation of spatial relations in a sample of 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and to compare their performance with that of adults. Four pictures of animals were presented at different locations on the outline of a circle. Participants were instructed to memorize the array of locations and then, in a direct retrieval task, to reconstruct it from memory on a piece of paper that included only the circle outline. Then, in the transformation task, participants were asked to randomly place one of the animals at a new position around the circle and then to place the remaining three animals so that object-to-object locations were preserved. Results from the direct retrieval task showed that 7-year-olds were less accurate than older children and adults, whereas 9- and 11-year-olds showed comparable performance to each other and to adults in reconstructing the array. Results from the transformation task revealed that adults were more accurate than children and that 11-year-olds were more accurate than 7-year-olds. There was no difference between 9- and 11-year-olds. Overall, these findings suggest that the ability to perform spatial transformations (a) develops gradually during childhood and (b) has a steeper developmental slope than the simple retrieval of memorized spatial information.