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The Relationship Between The Perception Of Axes Of Symmetry And Spatial Memory During Early Childhood, Margaret R. Ortmann, Anne R. Schutte

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Early in development, there is a transition in spatial working memory (SWM). When remembering a location in a homogeneous space (e.g., in a sandbox), young children are biased toward the midline symmetry axis of the space. Over development, a transition occurs that leads to older children being biased away from midline. The dynamic field theory (DFT) explains this transition in biases as being caused by a change in the precision of neural interaction in SWM and improvements in the perception of midline. According to the DFT, young children perceive midline, but there is a quantitative improvement in the perception of …