摘要:Individuals navigating a space use two strategies: adults mainly use a ‘counting’ strategy(i.e. numbering or counting the intersection in the town; memorising a series of left and rightturns from a given starting position), children rely more on a ‘response’ strategy (i.e. usingreference points or landmarks; turn after the blue building). A lot of research into spatialcognition requires the use of virtual environments and uses regular environments (‘Cartesiangrids, Squareland or city-block raster’ (Hamburger and Knauff, 2011), ‘radial maze’ type(Astur, Tropp, Sava, Constable and Markus, 2004), etc.) but few studies have focused onhow children and adolescents learn to memorise an itinerary in a less regular environment(Nys, Gyselinck, Orriols and Hickmann, 2015). The originality of this work is to understandhow children and adolescents learn to memorise an itinerary in a developmental perspective(participants aged 6 to 15 years old). The intention is also to identify any development in thestrategies when the children and adolescents reproduce a route in two differently structuredenvironments (cities with a regular or irregular plan). The results of the first experiment,conducted with V-Squarecity (a regular environment), show that the environment does notrequire the employment of response strategies, but may give rise to strategies fororganising/storing spatial information (counting strategies). It will also be shown that youngerchildren use response strategies and that older children develop counting strategies. Theresult of the second experiment, conducted with V-Sinuouscity (an irregular environment),reveal the reduced use of counting strategies. This work emphasises the need to takeaccount of the nature of simulated spaces during studies on spatial strategies
关键词:Spatial cognition; Virtual reality; Navigation strategies; Structure of the;environment; Child development; Adolescent development