Németh Adrienn Réka, Stojić Sandra, Nadasdy Zoltan
Doctoral School of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.
Front Psychol. 2025 May 14;16:1521487. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1521487. eCollection 2025.
In this article, we review the extensive and complex fabric of literature concerning the ontogenesis of spatial representations from earliest childhood to the elderly, including normal and abnormal aging (dementia and Alzheimer's disease). We also revisit fundamental concepts of the neuronal representations of space, egocentric vs. allocentric reference frames, and path integration. We highlight a thread of contradictions in spatial cognition from infant cognition to the first breakthrough at around the age of four. The contradictions reemerge in the literature on age-related decline in spatial cognition. We argue that these contradictions derive from the incorrect assumption that path integration is exclusively associated with allocentric frames of references, hence, signatures of path integration are often taken as evidence for allocentric perspective-taking. We posit that several contradictions in the literature can be resolved by acknowledging that path integration is agnostic to the type of reference frame and can be implemented in both egocentric and allocentric frames of reference. By freeing the frames of reference from path integration, we arrive at a developmental trajectory consistent across cognitive development studies, enabling us to ask questions that may dissolve the obscurity of this topic. The new model also sheds light on the very early stage of spatial cognition.
在本文中，我们回顾了大量复杂的文献，这些文献涉及从幼儿期到老年期空间表征的发生发展，包括正常衰老和异常衰老（痴呆症和阿尔茨海默病）。我们还重新审视了空间神经元表征的基本概念，如自我中心与他者中心参照系以及路径整合。我们强调了从婴儿认知到四岁左右首次突破期间空间认知方面的一系列矛盾。这些矛盾在关于空间认知与年龄相关衰退的文献中再次出现。我们认为，这些矛盾源于一个错误的假设，即路径整合仅与他者中心参照系相关联，因此，路径整合的特征常常被视为采用他者中心视角的证据。我们假定，通过认识到路径整合与参照系类型无关，并且可以在自我中心和他者中心参照系中实现，文献中的几个矛盾可以得到解决。通过将参照系从路径整合中解放出来，我们得出了一条在认知发展研究中一致的发展轨迹，这使我们能够提出可能消除该主题模糊性的问题。新模型也为空间认知的早期阶段提供了启示。
