ABSTRACT

This experiment tests the age at which left-to-right spatial associations found in infancy shift to culture-specific spatial biases in later childhood, for both numerical and non-numerical information. Children ages 1–5 years (N = 320) were tested within an eye-tracking paradigm which required passive viewing of a video portraying a spatial transposition. In this video, an item was hidden in a vertical set of locations, which were then surreptitiously rotated 90°.There were several conditions, which varied in the degree to which the locations were presented alongside ordinal (numerical, alphabetical) or non-ordinal (nonsense label) information. After transposition, a narrator prompted the child to visually search the array.The amount of time spent fixating in a location consistent with a left-to-right mapping or a right-to-left mapping was measured to gauge the degree and laterality of spatial associations. Overall, children looked more toward locations consistent with a left-to-right mapping. This effect fluctuated with age, dipping as children entered toddlerhood, increasing in 3- and 4-year-olds, and then disappearing at age 5. The ordinal nature of the stimuli (e.g., numerical or non-numerical) did not influence the laterality of the spatial associations. A follow-up experiment confirms that, like older preschoolers, adults (N = 66) also exhibit no spontaneous left-to-right mapping bias in this paradigm, with no fluctuation as a result of condition. These data support the presence of a decrease in left-to-right processing around the age of two as children recede from infantile spatial biases and progress to exhibiting culture-specific spatial biases in early childhood.

摘要

该实验测试了在婴儿期发现的从左到右的空间关联在儿童后期转变为特定于文化的空间偏差的年龄，包括数字和非数字信息。1-5 岁的儿童 (N = 320) 在眼动追踪范式中进行了测试，该范式需要被动观看描绘空间转位的视频。在这个视频中，一个项目被隐藏在一组垂直的位置中，然后偷偷地旋转了 90°。有几种情况，这些位置与序数（数字、字母）或非序数一起呈现的程度不同（废话标签）信息。换位后，叙述者提示孩子视觉搜索阵列。测量固定在与从左到右映射或从右到左映射一致的位置所花费的时间量，以衡量空间关联的程度和偏侧性。总体而言，孩子们更倾向于从左到右映射的位置。这种影响随着年龄的增长而波动，随着儿童进入蹒跚学步而下降，在 3 岁和 4 岁时增加，然后在 5 岁时消失。刺激的顺序性质（例如，数字或非数字）不会影响偏侧性的空间关联。后续实验证实，与年龄较大的学龄前儿童一样，成年人 (N = 66) 在这种范式中也没有表现出自发的从左到右映射偏差，也没有因状况而波动。