| Children's performance on spatial search problems was explored to determine when and how young children become capable of noting and using traces such as footprints as an aid to searching for a hidden person. Two kinds of task settings were designed: search in a large-scale natural environment, and 2-dimensional pictorial tracking problems. It was found that before 5 years of age children fail to show consistent reliance on a tracking strategy that relies on footprint paths in a real-life environment. However, partially successful performance of 4-year-old children on two-dimensional pictorial tracking problems indicated that understanding of footprint traces as a clue to direction of locomotion develops before age 5. Errors and alternative search patterns were also recorded and analyzed to explore the transitory stages from failure to success. |
