Herman J F, Norton L M, Roth S F
J Exp Child Psychol. 1983 Dec;36(3):453-70. doi: 10.1016/0022-0965(83)90046-2.
In two experiments adults (mean age = 19-5), sixth graders (mean age = 11-8), fourth graders (mean age = 9-8), and second graders (mean age = 7-8) walked a straight line distance through a large-scale environment. Subjects were then asked to estimate the time taken to traverse each half of the walk and to estimate the distance between objects seen along the walk. In Experiment 1 each half of the walk was traversed in the same amount of time but contained a different number of objects (clutter). Time and distance estimates were related, but were not affected by the number of intervening objects encountered between locations. In Experiment 2 subjects again encountered a different number of objects along each half of the walk but each half was traversed in varying amounts of time. Again, time and distance estimates were related, and there was no clutter effect. There were no consistent developmental differences across the two experiments. It was concluded that (1) Thorndyke's clutter effect does not occur across all types of spatial cognition tasks, and (2) children and adults tend to relate time and distance across a variety of distance estimation tasks.
在两项实验中，成年人（平均年龄 = 19.5岁）、六年级学生（平均年龄 = 11.8岁）、四年级学生（平均年龄 = 9.8岁）和二年级学生（平均年龄 = 7.8岁）在一个大规模环境中沿直线行走一段距离。然后要求受试者估计走完每半段路程所需的时间，并估计沿途看到的物体之间的距离。在实验1中，每半段路程所用时间相同，但包含的物体数量（杂乱程度）不同。时间和距离估计是相关的，但不受两个地点之间遇到的中间物体数量的影响。在实验2中，受试者在每半段路程中同样遇到不同数量的物体，但每半段路程所用时间不同。同样，时间和距离估计是相关的，并且没有杂乱效应。在这两项实验中没有一致的发展差异。得出的结论是：（1）桑代克的杂乱效应并非在所有类型的空间认知任务中都会出现；（2）儿童和成年人在各种距离估计任务中倾向于将时间和距离联系起来。
