Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to David H Uttal.
A recent paper by Dehaene, Izard, Pica and Spelke examined geometric concepts among the Munduruku, an Amazonian group without many linguistic terms for spatial relations, and without maps or formal schooling. Their profile of strengths and weaknesses provides new insights into the nature of the human mind and the importance of culture and language to the development of thought.
Prior research (DeLoache, Uttal & Rosengren, 2004) has documented that 18- to 30-month-olds occasionally make scale errors: they attempt to fit their bodies into or onto miniature objects (e.g. a chair) that are far too small for them. The current study explores whether scale errors are limited to actions that directly involve the child's body. We investigated whether children would also make scale errors with a doll and objects that were much too small for the doll (e.g. a chair, a bed). Many participants did try to fit the doll into or onto the miniature objects. Thus, the previously documented phenomenon of scale errors extends to situations in which the relevant size difference is between two objects. This finding supports the view that scale errors occur when visual information about object size fails to influence the decision to act on an object. The results are discussed in terms of the use of visual information for the planning and control of actions.
People acquire spatial information from many sources, including maps, verbal descriptions, and navigating in the environment. The different sources present spatial information in different ways. For example, maps can show many spatial relations simultaneously, but in a description, each spatial relation must be presented sequentially. The present research investigated how these source differences influence the mental models that children and adults form of the presented information. In Experiment 1, 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds and adults learned the layout of a six-room space either from verbal descriptions or from a map. They then constructed the configuration and pointed to target locations. Participants who learned from the map performed significantly better than those who learned from the description. Ten-year-olds performed nearly as well as adults did. The 8-year-olds' mental models differed substantially from the older children's and adults' mental models. The younger children retained the sequential information but did not integrate the relations into a survey-like cognitive map. Experiment 2 demonstrated that viewing the shape of the configuration, without seeing the map in full, could facilitate 8-year-olds' use of the verbal information and their ability to integrate the locations. The results demonstrate developmental differences in the mental representation of spatial information from descriptions. In addition, the results reveal that maps and other graphic representations can facilitate children's spatial thinking by helping them to transcend the sequential nature of language and direct experience.
We report a perception-action dissociation in the behavior of normally developing young children. In adults and older children, the perception of an object and the organization of actions on it are seamlessly integrated. However, as documented here, 18- to 30-month-old children sometimes fail to use information about object size and make serious attempts to perform impossible actions on miniature objects. They try, for example, to sit in a dollhouse chair or to get into a small toy car. We interpret scale errors as reflecting problems with inhibitory control and with the integration of visual information for perception and action.