Development of spatial cognition

Spatial cognition plays an essential role in everyday functioning and provides a foundation for successful performance in scientific and technological fields. Reasoning about space involves processing information about distance, angles, and direction. Starting from infancy, children display sensitivity to these spatial properties, although their initial skills are quite limited. Subsequent development during early childhood and through the elementary school years involves gradual improvement in the use of individual frames of reference (i.e., egocentric and allocentric), as well as in the ability to flexibly combine different types of spatial information. Similarly, there is a relatively long progression from the starting points, when infants and young children display sensitivity to distance and form simple spatial categories, to more mature spatial competence when older children and adults integrate distance and categorical information hierarchically. Such developments are associated with both the maturation of specific brain regions and accumulating experience, including interactions with the physical world and the acquisition of cultural tools. In particular, the mastery of symbolic spatial representations, such as maps and models, significantly augments basic spatial capabilities. While growing evidence implicates both biological and experiential factors in the development of spatial cognition, a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the developmental process requires further investigation of how such factors interact to produce organisms that function competently in their environments. WIREs Cogn Sci 2012, 3:349362. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1171