Center for Research in Psychology, Cognition and Culture, Institute of Psychology, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia.
Department of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia.
PLoS One. 2020 Dec 29;15(12):e0243845. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243845. eCollection 2020.
Using maps effectively requires the ability to scale distances while preserving angle and orientation, the three properties of Euclidean geometry. The aim of the current study was twofold: first, to examine how the ability to represent and use these Euclidean properties changes with development when scaling maps in object-to-object relationships and, second, to explore the effects on the scaling performance of two variables of the array of objects, type of angular configuration and relative vector length. To this end, we tested seventy-five 4-, 6-, and 8-year-old children, as well as twenty-five adults, in a simple completion task with different linear and triangular configurations of objects. This study revealed important developmental changes between 4 and 6 years of age and between 8 years of age and adulthood for both distance and angle representation, while it also showed that the configuration variables affected younger and older children's performances in different ways when scaling distances and preserving angles and orientation. This study was instrumental in showing that, from an early age, children are able to exploit an intrinsic system of reference to scale geometrical configurations of objects.
有效地使用地图需要具备在保持角度和方向的同时缩放距离的能力，这是欧几里得几何的三个属性。本研究的目的有两个：首先，研究在以物体对物体的关系缩放地图时，代表和使用这些欧几里得属性的能力如何随发展而变化；其次，探讨在缩放性能中，两个物体数组变量——角度配置类型和相对向量长度——的影响。为此，我们在一个简单的完成任务中测试了 75 名 4 岁、6 岁和 8 岁的儿童以及 25 名成年人，任务中涉及不同线性和三角形的物体配置。这项研究揭示了 4 岁至 6 岁之间以及 8 岁至成年之间距离和角度表示的重要发展变化，同时还表明，在缩放距离和保持角度和方向时，配置变量以不同的方式影响年幼和年长的儿童的表现。这项研究有助于表明，从很小的时候起，儿童就能够利用内在的参照系统来缩放物体的几何配置。
