Adventure - Independent Way Finding

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ADVENTURE AS A STIMULUS FOR COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

EDWARD H. CORNELL, DIANNE C. HADLEY, TREENA M. STERLING, MELANIE A. CHAN, AND PATRICIA BOECHLER

University of Alberta

Abstract

As illustrated in two studies of the development of children’s independent way ¢nding, the happenstance of adventure provides natural opportunities to shape analytical and strategic thinking. Although they had not

been instructed, when walking to the limits of their home range, 12-year-olds more than 8-year-olds selectively

attended to environmental features with good landmark qualities. There was evidence of learning: older chil-

dren who had recently experienced the requirements of leading the way to and from a distant site increasingly

noted landmarks in the skyline and landmarks near intersections. Universal adventures of childhood may be

especially important for the development of sensitivity to contextual feedback and £exibility in achieving

goals. # 2001 Academic Press

Introduction

It often happens that there is a discrepancy be-

tween what parents think their children are doing

and what in fact their children are doing. Parents’naivete ¤ about their children’s activities may be evi-

dent in several important domains, such as indepen-

dent travel from home, viewing of violent television

programming, and sexual behavior. One of the more

serious implications of parental naivete ¤ is that chil-

dren are participating in potentially harmful activ-

ities without guidance. Parents may caution or

forbid and thereafter assume that their child is

avoiding an unacceptable activity. The younger child

who nevertheless tries forbidden activities may be

learning ways from peers or by the consequences ex-

perienced as a result of his or her own independentattempts. The observations that we report here sug-

gest that children’s self-directed adventures are im-

portant opportunities for what Siegler (1996) has

characterized as the natural selection of cognitive

strategies.

Strategy development

In an earlier analysis, Siegler and Jenkins (1989) de-

¢ned cognitive strategies as non-obligatory and

goal-directed sequences of activities. They di¡eren-

tiated strategies from invariant procedural solu-

tions, which children may represent as the only

way to achieve a goal. They also di¡erentiate strate-

gies from plans, which are considered to be volun-

tary and deliberate. Thus, Siegler and Jenkins

‘de¢ne strategies as di¡ering from procedures in

that strategies necessarily involve choice, and as dif-fering from plans in that the choice process is not

necessarily conscious’ (p. 12). As we shall illustrate,

these distinctions seem especially appropriate to

characterize how children begin ¢nding their way

in new territory.

The development of spatial cognition in large-

scale environments is classically described as an

age-stage sequence (Piaget & Inhelder, 1967; Piaget,

et al ., 1960; Hart & Moore, 1973; Siegel & White,

1975). Prior to puberty, children’s spatial problem

solving is thought to be constrained by limited abil-

ities to reason and the predominance of landmarkand route-based forms of representation. Siegler’s

(1996) theory of strategy development suggests a dif-

ferent description. The theory begins with the as-

sumption that children have a variety of cognitive

strategies available and further assumes that there

is creation, deconstruction, and selection among

strategies when new problems are confronted. Chil-

dren’s initial attempts at solving a problem result in

feedback, outcomes indicating which strategy

proved most e¡ective in particular situations. Chil-

dren may experiment with partial or ine⁄cient stra-

tegies, sometimes regressing to clumsy methods.

However, in general, children are assumed to

Journal of Environmental Psychology (2001) 21, 219^231 0272 - 4944/01/030219 + 13$30.00/0# 2001 Academic Pressdoi:10.1006/jevp.2001.0207, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on



choose and retain those strategies that are e⁄-

ciently executed and produce the best results in re-

sponse to environmental pressures. By

incorporating such concepts as variability, change,competition, and selection among strategies,

Siegler’s theory of cognitive development bears theo-

retical similarities to evolutionary theory.

In addition, Siegler (1996) argues that the diver-

sity of problem solving methods used by children

and adults is not compatible with the notion of dis-

crete stages of cognitive development. The gradual

improvements in speed and ease of execution of

strategies, the episodic creation of new successful

strategies, and the occasional brute force repetition

of old strategies suggests overlap and continuity of

cognitive competencies. The description seems to¢t with recent arguments and empirical evidence

about the development of representation of large-

scale environments. For example, in contrast to a

stage-like progression through distinct modes of

landmark, route, and survey representation, the

spatiotemporal associations that characterize route

representations have been found to be part of ¢rst

knowledge along with recognition memory for land-

marks (Cornell et al., 1999). Similarly, Montello

(1998) summarizes a body of research that indicates

that both survey and topological representations

are involved when way ¢nders acquire route knowl-

edge.Natural environments are rich with information,

so it seems likely that way ¢nding involves variabil-

ity and selection of attentive strategies. Neverthe-

less, the main empirical support for Siegler’s (1996)

theory comes from studies of children’s approaches

to problems with conventional and formal proper-

ties. Children have been found to select among and

adjust strategies when using an analog clock to tell

time, when mapping letter-sound correspondences

to spell words, or when processing arithmetic sym-

bols. We present preliminary observations here to il-

lustrate that the theory may be especially suited tounderstanding cognitive development as a result of

childhood adventures. Children’s strategic attention

to certain outdoor landmarks is observed in a way

¢nding problem with obvious adaptive signi¢cance.

There should be natural contingencies for selection

of landmarks because children need to arrive at

destinations within a reasonable time, minimize

the e¡orts of travel, and avoid the dangers of being

lost.

There may be four ways that children change

their attentive strategies in response to the require-

ments of way ¢nding: (1) introduction of new, more

advanced strategies; (2) increasing use of the more

advanced strategies from among those that are al-

ready known; (3) increasingly e¡ective execution of

strategies; and (4) more adaptive choices among

strategies (Rittle-Johnson & Siegler, 1999). Becausechildren have used landmarks and relations be-

tween landmarks as frameworks for spatially direc-

ted behavior since infancy (Huttenlocher &

Newcombe, 1984), in the two studies that follow we

primarily look for evidence for the second mechan-

ism of change, increasing use of the more advanced

strategies. We note, however, that way ¢nding in

new territory requires prospective selection of land-

marks for the purpose of returning home. Young

children’s thinking would certainly be adaptive if

they considered their parent’s instructions and their

own competence before attempting new advancedstrategies. Hence, in the ¢rst study we also look for

evidence for the fourth mechanism of change, invol-

ving choice of prudent strategies.

Expansion of home range

Way ¢nding problems occur with the expansion of

home range during early and middle childhood.

Home range is the territory that includes the child’s

self-initiated travel. In most societies, home range

for infants and toddlers is clustered around the fa-

mily residence. Way ¢nding close to home is usually

accomplished by approaching visible destinations.For example, in suburbs of Western cities, the ¢rst

extensions into the world are usually neighborhood

spaces such as sidewalks, alleys, and lawns of near-

by peers. However, cross-cultural studies have also

suggested that home range expands signi¢cantly

with the onset of peer interactions that are unsu-

pervised by adults (Berry, 1966; Coates & Bussard,

1974; Dawson, 1967; Harper & Sanders, 1975; Hart,

1979; Landy, 1965; Matthews, 1987; Munroe &

Munroe, 1971; Van Vliet, 1983). The relatively small

area of neighborhood play becomes the base of a dif-

fuse set of routes to sites for a variety of outdooractivities. Parents or peers may be the initial guides

for much of this network, but children between the

ages of 5 and 12 are clearly extending the spatial

extent of their activities voluntarily and indepen-

dently (Moore & Young, 1978).

Our hypothesis is that these extensions provide

the motivation and proving grounds for way ¢nding

strategies. Two observational studies are described.

In the ¢rst, we use a technique described by Kirasic

and Mathes (1990) to assess whether there were age-

related di¡erences in patterns of scanning the

environment during outdoor walks. Certain pat-

terns of scanning may indicate a lack of selective

220 Edward H. Cornell et al.



attention to landmarks. For example, Kirasic and

Mathes found that elderly adults who did not look

around while standing in a mall were ine⁄cient at

organizing a route in that environment.We also recorded the distance and duration of the

children’s walks. These measures had been pre-

viously used to address a request by city police ser-

vices to tabulate the extent of travel by children of

di¡erent ages (Cornell & Heth, 1996). In situations

where children are reported lost or missing, the po-

lice use the crow’s-£ight distance from the point last

seen to a child’s intended destination as a radius for

a circle to contain initial search operations (see

Figure 1). Note that crow’s £ight distance is a linear

estimate of home range; play sites are typically not

the same distance in other directions (Matthews,

1987). Moreover, because of the layout of paths, dis-

tractions, and barriers in the environment, chil-

dren’s travel to their destinations is longer than

that estimated by a straight line.

Study 1

Method

Participants. Thirty-six families participated, al-

lowing observations of 18 6-year-olds and 18 12-

year-olds. Each age group had an equal distribution

of boys and girls, mean ages 6 : l (range 5:9^6:6)

and 12:2 (range 11 : l0^12:5). The families resided in

middle- to upper-class suburban neighborhoods of

FIGURE 1. A child’s home range is represented on a cadastral map. The solid line between the child’s home (H: back door) and intendeddestination (ID: soccer ¢eld) is the crow’s £ight measure of the farthest distance travelled. The dashed line illustrates the actual path

walked by the child to reach the intended destination. The remaining solid line completes a wedge used to estimate the dispersion of the child’s travel.

Adventure and Cognitive Development 221



Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (population 600,000)

and the adjacent suburban community of St. Albert

(population 46,000). The neighborhoods were situ-

ated beyond the urban core and primarily zonedfor single-family houses. The neighborhoods were

less than 20 years old and featured curvilinear

streets with branching cul-de-sacs. Bicycle and pe-

destrian trails were accessible throughout the

neighborhoods, and most provided access to natural

parklands and school playgrounds.

Procedure. Families were called after sending a let-

ter describing the study of home range and its im-

plications for police search operations. During a

telephone interview establishing participation, a re-search assistant asked parents a question police ty-

pically ask when investigating a missing child

incident: ‘What is the location of the farthest place

your child has ever travelled independently from

your home?’ The assistant also asked parents about

any methods for way ¢nding they may have told

their children, as well as instructions they may have

provided about what to do when lost. Parents were

invited to follow along on the walk, and three

elected to do so.

The following day the same assistant arrived at

the household and asked the child to take her to

the farthest place from their home that they had‘been to alone and knew they could get to’. The assis-

tant informed the child that she would be a few

steps behind the child in order to ensure that the

child was the leader. The assistant carried a tape re-

corder with a microphone fastened near her collar.

This allowed a description of the route in enough

detail to be translated to a 1:5000 cadastral map.

The assistant also wore a race watch that signaled

once per minute. At the signal, the assistant noted

whether the child’s head was displaced from forward

orientation. A horizontal scan was recorded if the

head was estimated to be more than 158 to the leftor right of a straight ahead posture and a vertical

scan was recorded if the head was estimated to be

more than 158 upward or downward.

Children were encouraged to rest whenever they

wished during the walk. If a child became confused

or concerned about ¢nding their way, the assistant

assured the child that she knew the way back and

they could go back anytime they wanted. The assis-

tant did not provide navigation hints, and several

children elected to double-back after considering

their location. After reaching the child’s chosen des-

tination, the assistant praised the child and sug-

gested that it might be fun to try a di¡erent route

home: ‘Can you lead us back a di¡erent way? Would

you like to try to go home using new paths?’.

Results

Parental instructions

Parents of younger children told us that they gave

strict instructions to their children to only travel

to close or visible locations by previously shown

routes. However, when 6 -year-old children chatted

while leading their excursions, they indicated that

interesting sightsöa cat on a fence, an opening un-

der a chain link fenceöor play with friends had led

them to discover other places that were close to or

visible from permitted locations. Parents of 12-year-old children were more aware of the possibility of

autonomy and often asked about actual travel with-

out chastising their children. Interestingly, most

parents typically provided instructions for safe

independent travel, but few discussed way ¢nding

strategies that could be used when lost. Of the 18

families in each age group, 16 of the parents of 6-

year-olds and 16 of the parents of 12-year-olds gave

safety-related instructions such as:

‘Always keep some coins so that you can call.

What’s our number?’

‘Always cross streets at crosswalks. Stay awayfrom tra⁄c’.

‘You know how to tell which houses are Block

Parents?’

‘Don’t ask strangers for directions. Go to the

clerk in the grocery store.’

‘Stay in one place.’

Two of the parents of 6-year-olds and 5 of the par-

ents of 12-year-olds gave way ¢nding instructions

such as:

‘Watch where you are going’.

‘Retrace your steps’.‘Read street signs to see whether the numbers

are going up or down’.

‘Remember, the sun rises in the east and sets

in the west’.

Characteristics of travel

A 262 (Age group6Gender) ANOVA of the crow’s

£ight distance traveled indicated only a reliable ef-

fect of age group, F (l,35) = 31Á20, p50Á001. Twelve-

year-old children traveled a mean of 2501m

(S.D. = 1240) as the crow £ies and 6 -year-old children

traveled a mean of 769 m (S.D. = 326).




Because of the di¡erence in scale of travel by the

two age groups, a logarithmic transformation was

applied to the crow’s £ight distance measures to as-

sess whether there was a discrepancy between the

actual travel by the child and the distance of the

location reported by parents to be their child’s

farthest destination. A 262 (Age group6Gender)

multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) of the

two distance measures indicated the interaction il-

lustrated in Figure 2, F (1,34)= 6Á25, p50

Á02. The lo-

cations of distant destinations known by parents of

12-year-olds averaged only 30 m more crow’s £ight

distance from home than the destinations they

walked to, but there was on average a 262 m under-

estimate of 6-year-old’s actual travel.

When asked to lead us to a place they knew they

could get to, 6 -year-olds seemed to lead the assis-

tant along direct routes. Route maps indicated few

turns and destinations that could be seen early in

the walk. To estimate the challenges of di¡erent

route choices, we created an index of extra travel,

measured as the actual distance travelled by thechild divided by the distance of the shortest possi-

ble route to the destination. Values over 1Á0 indicate

unnecessary travel. We found that, leading the walk

from home to destination, the mean value for the 12-

year-olds was 1Á24, indicating that they travelled

more than one ¢fth as far as they needed to,

whereas the mean extra distance index for the 6 -

year-olds on the outgoing walk was 1Á06 (S.D. = 0Á29

and 0Á19, for the older and younger groups, respec-

tively). A 262 (Age group6Gender) analysis of var-

iance (ANOVA) of the extra distance index

indicated the age e¡ect was reliable, F (1,35) = 7Á92,

p50Á01.

All children successfully reached their chosen

destination.When asked at their destinations if they

could ¢nd a di¡erent way home, 16 12-year-olds

elected to try, but only 11 6-year-olds did so,w2 = 3Á7, df = 1, p = 0Á05. Two 6-year-olds considered a

return on the parallel sidewalk on the opposite side

of the street to be a new route. The di¡erence be-

tween the age groups in extra distance travelled

during the walk from destination to home was not

reliable, F (1,35) = 0Á239. The mean extra distance in-

dex of 12-year-old children was 1Á23, whereas that of

6 -year-old children increased to 1Á17 (S.D. = 0Á25 and

0Á44 for the older and younger groups, respectively).

Scanning behavior

On average, the 12 -year-olds were recorded to be

scanning on M = 19 per cent (S.D. = 15) of their

M = 108min (S.D. = 56) walks, which was less than

the M =32 per cent (S.D.=18) of minute-sampled ob-

servations of the M =36min (S.D.=16) duration walks

of the 6-year-olds, as indicated by a 262 (Age

group6Gender) ANOVA, F (1,35) = 4Á94, p50Á05.

However, 12-year-olds were looking from side-to-side

M =88 per cent (S.D.=24) of the time they were re-

corded to be scanning, whereas 6-year-olds showed

M = 75 per cent (S.D. = 19) side-to-side scanning

F (1,32) = 2Á93, p50Á10, a marginal di¡erence re£ect-

ing younger children’s tendencies to look downwardat features of the path. The result is corroborated in

the study that follows. One 6 -year-old boy in the

present study volunteered that directing attention

downward was an important technique for him: ‘I

just know how to get there by looking at the ground.

All I need to look at is the ground’. Note that a

downward pattern of scanning would not help to

register landmarks that could be used if the boy

stepped o¡ path during his return.

Discussion

These results describe natural opportunities for

children to try way ¢nding strategies. Both the

duration of excursions and extraneous travel on the

way to their destination increased from early to

middle childhood. Parental emphasis on safety in-

structions left open the possibility that children

were learning to selectively attend to landmarks

during independent excursions or with peers.

Although some were cautious about attempting

new routes, 6 -year-old children were travelling be-

yond the limits their parents expected for them.

Their path choices for these excursions typically in-

volved linear extensions along established routes.

FIGURE 2. The discrepancy between parents’ reports of their chil-

dren’s travel and 6 -year-old children’s actual travel from urbanand suburban homes. Each bar represents the mean distance todestinations of 18 participants.




These choices allowed selective attention to highly

familiar landmarks and in many cases, repetitions

of familiar landmark-action sequences. The strate-

gies of 6-year-olds were consistent with route-basedrepresentation of their neighborhoods (Siegel &

White, 1975).

In contrast, 12-year-old children were more likely

to visit distant destinations and take new routes.

Their pattern of scanning indicated a greater pro-

portion of attention to landmarks along the horizon

than on the paths themselves. The pattern seems to

be more discriminative; peripheral landmarks such

as houses are typically more distinguishable to

adults than cracks on the sidewalk. In addition,

previously seen landmarks on the skyline may be

visible when the child is scanning horizontally. The12-year-olds may be more likely to attempt complex

routes than the 6 -year-olds because they di¡eren-

tially attend to landmarks that are anchors for sur-

vey representations (Golledge, 1995).

In our second study, we sought evidence to clarify

the direction of the relations between the demands

of way ¢nding and the development of selective at-

tention. On two separate days, we asked new chil-

dren to take us to di¡erent distant places they had

walked to only once or twice. There is an expanse

and variety of objects and events that can attract

attention in new territory, but not all of these are

pertinent to the requirements of returning home.We reasoned that, if adventure stimulates cognitive

development, challenges and experiences while navi-

gating in relatively unfamiliar territory on the ¢rst

day should lead to prospective selection of land-

marks on the second day.

To further ensure that adventures would occur,

we elected to observe children whose chosen routes

would likely be more complex than those of 6-year-

olds. A range of ages bracketing eight years was ob-

served because of recent evidence that 8 -year-olds

are beginning to use spatial relations as navigation

cues in natural settings (Heth et al ., 1997). Hence,we assumed that verbal protocols of children ap-

proaching and beyond 8 or 12 years of age would

likely reveal the microgenesis of strategies for selec-

tion of landmarks (Siegler & Crowley, 1991).

Study 2

Method

Subjects. Families and neighborhoods were similar

to those of the ¢rst study. We observed eight boys

and eight girls of mean age 8Á1 (range 6

Á8^8

Á11) and

eight boys and eight girls of mean age 11Á8 (range

10Á1^12Á8).

Procedure. Families were recruited for participa-tion using the procedures used for Study 1. To en-

sure that parents would not discuss strategies with

their children, parents were not questioned about

way ¢nding instructions and were simply told to tell

their children that people from the university were

coming to visit their special places and to see the

paths they knew in their neighborhood. Parents

were instructed to ask their children about 3 to 5

places far from their home that they had walked to

by themselves only once or twice. Parents were sub-

sequently contacted so that the research assistant

could identify these places on a survey map andmeasure the crow’s £ight distance to each. Two

places were selected that were similar distances

from the home.

When the research assistant visited the home, she

engaged the child in a warm-up task that involved

pointing and labeling objects in pictures of complex

scenes. Once rapport had been established, the as-

sistant suggested that the child show her the way

to one of his or her special places. Children were

told that it would be a safe walk, because the assis-

tant knew the neighborhood and had a cellular

phone so that they could call home at any time. Par-

ents were also invited to accompany the walk, andthree elected to do so.

For half of the children, the ¢rst walk was to the

closer of the two selected destinations. Prior to the

¢rst walk, half the children were told they would

have to return home using di¡erent paths than they

had used to reach their special place. The other half

were told before leaving home that they would have

to return by taking the exact same paths that they

used to reach their special place. The order of the

close and far routes was counterbalanced with new

route and route reversal procedures, and boys and

girls of di¡erent age groups were assigned to ordersusing a blocked random design.

For half of the children, prior to both walks the

assistant asked the child to name things that he or

she saw ‘that would be helpful for ¢nding the way to

and from far away places’. These children were

prompted to name what they were looking at if they

had not named landmarks for over 5 min and if they

were observed to be scanning and did not mention

anything. To check whether the requirement to

name landmarks a¡ected way ¢nding performance,

the other half of the children did not receive these

instructions or prompts, but the assistant neverthe-

less recorded what they said. Assignment to the




condition to name landmarks was counterbalanced

with age and gender of participants.

Results

Distance travelled. A 26262 (Age Group6Gen-

der6Name Landmarks Condition) ANOVA of crow’s

£ight distance traveled indicated no reliable e¡ects,

all F s 51Á6. When the two selected walks were com-

bined, the mean crow’s £ight distance from home to

destinations was 1116 and 1045 m, (S.D. = 324 and 732)

for the 12- and 8-year-olds, respectively. Hence, dif-

ferences in way ¢nding performance cannot be read-

ily attributed to di¡erences in the distance that the

children had to walk.

Route e⁄ciency. When asked prior to the walk, 8-

year-olds readily accepted the challenge to lead the

way to distant destinations that they had infre-

quently visited, but subsequently found it di⁄cult

to ¢nd their way to these sites. Indeed, two mea-

sures of route e⁄ciency indicated reliable di¡er-

ences between the 8-year-olds and 12-year-olds. The

paths taken by the younger children were more dis-

perse and they tended to walk farther than the least

distance route to the destination.

We estimated the dispersion of the children’s

paths as an angle. After the paths taken by thechild were drawn on a survey map, the paths were

bracketed within a wedge of a circle centered on the

child’s home (see Figure 1). The rationale for this

measure is that e⁄cient travel to a destination

should not involve excessive lateral displacements

from the crow’s £ight line between the origin of tra-

vel and the destination. Typically, displacements are

inevitable in cities because of the layout of blocks.

Regardless, the mean size of the smallest wedge to

contain the dispersion of the 12 -year-olds was 808

(S.D. = 26) and the mean dispersion of 6 -year-olds’

paths was 1048 (S.D. =26). A26262 (Age Group6Gender6Name Landmarks Condition) ANOVA of

the angle of dispersion indicated only a main e¡ect

of age group, F (1,31) = 6Á96, p50Á02.

The children’s route e⁄ciency was also indexed by

extra travel, measured as the actual distance tra-

velled by the child divided by the distance of the

shortest possible route. A 26262 (Age Group6

Gender6Name Landmarks Condition) ANOVA of

the extra distance index indicated only a main ef-

fect of age group, F (1,31) = 8Á79, p50Á01. Over all

outgoing and incoming walks, the mean extra dis-

tance index for the 12-year-olds was 1Á14 (S.D. = 0Á11),

whereas the mean index for the 8-year-olds was 1Á49

(S.D. = 0Á41), indicating that they travelled almost half

again as far as they needed to.

To isolate the source of the age di¡erence in way

¢nding performance, the extra distance index was

calculated separately for travel from home to desti-

nation and from destination to home for both the

route reversal and new route procedures.

A 26262 ANOVA was conducted with age group

as a between-subjects variable and two within-subjects variables, direction of travel (from or toward

home) and requirements for returning (old or new

paths). The main e¡ect of age group was repeated,

F (l,30) = 10Á07, p50Á01, and Figure 3 illustrates a 3-

way interaction, F (1,30) = 4Á03, p = 0Á5: The younger

children especially had di⁄culty returning home

when asked to use a new route. Interestingly, even

when asked to return by the same paths they had

used to reach their destination, 7 of the 16 younger

children initiated shortcuts. Three of the shortcuts

generally followed a line of sight between segments

of the previously walked path; four shortcuts re-quired an inferred connection.

Scanning. Two measures of selective attention were

recorded during these walks. Because our earlier

observations indicated that time-sampling was not

necessary, all episodes of side-to-side or up-down

head movements of more than 158 were recorded.

A 26262 (Age Group6Gender6Name Landmarks

Condition) ANOVA of the number of scans indicated

no reliable e¡ects, all F s51Á2, indicating that age

groups did not di¡er in frequency of scanning

when travelling to relatively unfamiliar destina-

tions. The mean number of scanning episodes

FIGURE 3. The crossover illustrates that younger children tendedto wander when asked to take a new route home from a distantdestination but successfully attempted shortcuts when asked toreturn by familiar routes. The extra distance index is the dis-

tance in meters of the route used by the child divided by the dis-tance in meters of the shortest possible route. Each pointrepresents the index for 16 children.




during a walk to and from a chosen destination was

21 (S.D. = 19).

The previously indicated reliable di¡erence be-

tween younger and older children in plane of scan-ning was corroborated, however. A 26262 (Age

Group6Gender6Name Landmarks Condition)

ANOVA of the percentage of horizontal scans

indicated a reliable e¡ect of age, F (1,31) = 4Á05,

p = 0Á05. Across all walks of the second study,

M = 80 per cent (S.D.=10) of the scanning episodes

by 12-year-olds were from side-to-side, in contrast

to M = 70 per cent (S.D.=15) side-to-side episodes by

8-year-olds.

Landmarks named. The second measure of selec-

tive attention involved an analysis of the qualitiesof objects that children named that they judged to

be useful to ¢nd their way. Four nonexclusive cate-

gories were de¢ned and the researcher who accom-

panied a child along a walk was trained to classify

reliably objects as they were named. Permanent

landmarks were rooted, inanimate, did not have

wheels, and were usually massive. Distant land-

marks were objects in the skyline that were judged

to be visible from at least two blocks o¡ route. Dis-

tant landmarks can provide bearings when immedi-

ate cues are unfamiliar or ambiguous. Landmarks

were considered unique if they were easily discrimi-

nated in the environmental context and there wasonly one along the walk; a house with a red door

was judged to be unique whereas a telephone pole

was not. Landmarks were judged to be near intersec-

tions if they were estimated to be visible from any of

the roads or paths leading to the intersection. These

would be important for associations with appropri-

ate turns, whereas nonintersection landmarks were

named in the middle of city blocks, where changes

in bearing could not occur.

One 8 -year-old girl named objects continuously

during one of her walks, listing over 200 objects as

she encountered them. When the datum from thisyoung outlier was eliminated, a 26262 (Age Group

6Gender6Name Landmarks Condition) ANOVA

of the total landmarks named indicated a marginal

e¡ect of age group F (1,30) = 3Á55, p50Á07. The 8-year-

olds tended to name more landmarks than the 12-

year-olds, means of 24 and 14 (S.D.s=17 and 12) re-

spectively. The name landmarks condition produced

a reliable e¡ect, F (1,30) = 8Á83, p50Á01. Children

who had been instructed to name objects that could

be useful for way ¢nding named a mean of 27 land-

marks (S.D. = 14), whereas children who had not been

instructed mentioned a mean of 12 (S.D. = 13) land-

marks. Two children (one in each age group) who

had not been told to do so did not mention any land-

marks along the walk.

Figure 4 illustrates the proportion of the total

landmarks named that were classi¢ed into the fourcategories pertinent to way ¢nding. An ANOVA for

the e¡ects of age was conducted for the proportions

obtained within each of the four categories. The

superiority of the 12 -year-olds in the proportion of

permanent and distant landmarks named was reli-

able, F s (1,29) = 16Á36 and 4Á77, respectively, p50Á05.

Each dashed line in Figure 4 represents an index

of the baseline proportion of the type of landmark

named. The index was derived by videotaping a ran-

dom sample of eight walks that had been taken by

boys and girls of each age group. Fifty random

frame numbers of the videotapes were generatedand all unitary objects were counted and categor-

ized when a frame had been isolated. Hence, the

baseline provides an estimate of the available quali-

ties of landmarks in the suburban environments

that were the context of the children’s excursions.

Contrasts of the baseline proportions of landmark

qualities with the proportions named by children

were conducted for each age group separately using

t-tests of independent samples, each with two-tailed

a= 0Á05.

Both age groups named a reliably larger propor-

tion of unique landmarks in contrasts with the ran-

domly derived baseline index, t(1, 58) = 11Á78 and

t(1, 59) = 8Á58, for the 12- and 6 -year-olds, respec-

tively. The 12-year-olds named a reliably larger pro-

portion of landmarks at intersections in contrast

with the baseline t(1, 63) = 2Á07, whereas the 8-year-

olds did not, t(1, 63) = 1Á53. The 12 -year-olds named a

reliably larger proportion of distant landmarks in

contrast with the baseline t(1, 63) = 3Á84, whereas

the 8 -year-olds did not, t(1, 63) = 1Á07. The propor-

tion of permanent landmarks named by the 12-

year-olds was not reliably di¡erent than the

large proportion of permanent objects indicated

to be in the environment, t(1, 63) = 0Á38. In contrast,

8 -year-olds named a reliably smaller proportion

of permanent landmarks than indicated by the

baseline, t(1, 63) =74Á78; their verbal protocols

indicated they sometimes noted animals (a bumble-

bee in a car window) and vehicles (an ice cream

truck).

The salience of objects and events may occasion-

ally belie their usefulness as cues for directing tra-

vel on the return trip. For example, one young girl

said, ‘I can’t remember if this is the right alley

because that dog isn’t here barking at us this

time’. Another young girl entering an alley said

‘Look, a blue recycle box. That’s important’. As she




progressed down the alley, she said ‘Oh, no! That’s

badöThere’s recycle boxes everywhere!’

E¡ects of experience. An important implication of

our hypothesis about the natural selection of strate-

gies is that experiences on the ¢rst walk should af-

fect measures of attention on the second walk. The

e¡ects of experience were assessed with 262

ANOVAs, with age group as a between-subjects vari-

able and ¢rst and second walk as levels in a within-

subjects variable. Note that subjects would not en-

ter into analyses if proportional data could not be

calculated for either walk.

There were no obvious changes in proportion of

horizontal scanning, although the main e¡ect of

age group was sustained, F (l, 30) = 4Á16, p = 0Á05. In

addition, there were two interactions indicating re-

liable age-related shifts in the qualities of land-

marks selected on the ¢rst and second walks. The

¢rst interaction involved the proportion of land-

marks named near intersections, F (1,19) = 22Á30,

p50Á01. During the second walk, 12 -year-olds se-

lected a greater proportion of landmarks near

FIGURE 4. Columns indicate the proportion of the total landmarks named by 16 children that were characterized by permanence, un-iqueness, proximity to intersections, or visibility in the distance. The dashed lines represent estimates of the baseline frequency of thefour characteristics.




intersections (M = 83%, S.D. = 13) than did 8-year-

olds (M = 47%, S.D=26), whereas there was no reliable

di¡erence between the age groups on the ¢rst walk

(M = 54% and 62% S.D. = 22 and 24, respectively, forthe older and younger children). The second interac-

tion involved the proportion of distant landmarks

named, F (1,19) = 5Á78, p50Á05. During the second

walk, 12 -year-olds selected a greater proportion of

distant landmarks (M = 49%, S.D. = 26) than did 8-

year-olds (M = 21%, S.D. = 14), whereas there was no

reliable di¡erence between the age groups on the

¢rst walk (M = 44% and 43% S.D. = 27 and 21, respec-

tively, for the older and younger children). Hence,

the older children chose more appropriate land-

marks after their experiences leading the way to

and from a distant destination. As explained byone 12 -year-old girl, ‘I can remember that this is

the corner I turn at to go home because that is my

school and that was my classroom door that I went

in every day’.

Diverse learning. Although we found that older

children more than younger children selectively at-

tended to objects with good landmark qualities, re-

cordings taken during the walks indicated that

attentive strategies were only one of a variety of

cognitive developments that would allow for e⁄-

cient way ¢nding. The development of a local knowl-

edge base is indicated here:

SG, an 11-year-old girl: ‘I know my way because of the bus route signs.’Research Assistant: ‘How do you know that thesesigns wont lead you onto a di¡erent bus route?’SG: ‘Because this is the only bus route around here’.

The ability to translate routes into con¢gurational

knowledge could also help with way ¢nding deci-

sions:

NK, an 8-year-old boy: ‘Hah! This street is kindalike a ‘U’, isn’t it.Look!öit goes back to the school we saw before.

That for sure is the school we saw’.

Finally, at least one child was beginning to use

calculations based on conventions of the urban grid

system:

LN, an 11-year-old girl: ‘‘Hmmm, 143rd street, and weneed to be on 146th street, so we can go along for afew more blocks. . .’’

These observations remind us that, although selec-

tive attention to landmarks is fundamental, there

are multiple solutions to the problem of human na-

vigation. A repertoire of these solutions seems to

develop as outcomes of adventure.

General Discussion

The development of home range

Interestingly, the extent of travel we observed in our

¢rst study was substantially greater than what has

been estimated from structured interviews with

children. For example, Matthews (1987) recorded

that 6-year-olds in the suburbs of Coventry,

England, named places they could travel to alone

that were 100 m from their home, and the children

reported that they had been to places with older

children that were 290 m from their home. Our ob-

servations indicate 3^4 times more actual travel. In

addition, Matthews and others (Coates &

Bussard, 1974; Hart, 1979; Payne & Jones, 1977) havenoted gender di¡erences in home range, with par-

ents reporting more constraints on their daughters

and some girls themselves reporting closer range of

experience than similar primary-school-age boys. We

did not discover gender di¡erences in any of the

measures observed during actual travel in both stu-

dies reported here. Moreover, the distances we re-

corded and lack of gender di¡erences are

consistent with the results of an earlier observa-

tional study with more age groups and larger sam-

ple sizes (Cornell & Heth, 1996).

There are several possible explanations for these

di¡erent results. Our observations were done in theneighborhoods, following behind children. It may be

that our participants selected unusually distant des-

tinations because they were con¢dent of the accom-

paniment by an adult. Or, it may be that young

children respond di¡erently as leaders in an out-

door activity than they do when they are inter-

viewed by adults. Finally, there are signi¢cant

cultural and cohort di¡erences between the chil-

dren who have participated in studies of home

range. The general ¢nding is that both boys and

girls are extending their activities into their neigh-

borhood so that by middle childhood all childrentravel well beyond the territory visible from their

home.

Our second study indicated that, by at least eight

years of age, children know the features of their

neighborhood that are distinctive. Their naming of

unique landmarks was impressive, but perhaps in

part the younger children were attracted by the sal-

ience of objects rather than to features that could

be linked to way ¢nding decisions. This interpreta-

tion is consistent with the ¢nding that 8 -year-old

children named proportionately less permanent ob-

jects than existed along their routes; records

showed that sometimes attention was commanded




by cats, sprinklers, vehicles, or even litter blowing

in the wind. As a result, the baseline estimates of

the frequency of categories of objects in the neigh-

borhood revealed that there was selective attentionto transient events; development consisted of in-

creased naming of permanent objects to the extent

that they exist in the surround. In contrast, the

number of landmarks named at intersections and

in the distance indicated attention beyond baseline

estimates of the proportion of landmarks with these

qualities. As found in experimental studies of route

learning, the increases in selective attention to

landmarks at intersections and in the distance de-

veloped between 8- and 12-years of age (Golledge

et al., 1985; Heth et al., 1997).

Implications for cognitive development

Although we only anticipated two, the results point

to three kinds of change in attentive strategies.

First, the landmarks named by children indicated

the introduction of a new advanced strategy. Older

children reliably named distant landmarks as help-

ful whereas younger children only named them with

the frequency with which they were estimated to

occur. Selective attention to distant landmarks is

consistent with theories of the development of ad-

vanced spatial representation (Siegel & White,

1975). Distant landmarks are particularly importantanchors for survey knowledge; they are typically

visible from a variety of locations and hence provide

reference points within a large-scale spatial frame-

work (Golledge, 1995).

Second, increased use of more advanced strate-

gies from those that are already known is indicated

by the development of patterns of scanning. Younger

children showed a predominance of looking to the

left and right, but older children showed even larger

proportions of this kind of scanning. We have sug-

gested that horizontal scanning reveals more distin-

guishable features of the urban environment thandoes downward looking. Moreover, horizontal scan-

ning may re£ect selective attention to features of

the skyline, distant landmarks that serve as refer-

ence points from a variety of perspectives.

Finally, we interpret two observations as exam-

ples of adaptive choice among attentive strategies.

The ¢rst is indicated by the 6-year-old children

who chose direct routes that allowed them to keep

in contact with familiar landmarks. The second is

indicated by the 12-year-old children who no longer

named transient events as important landmarks.

Both observations indicate selective attention to re-

liable environmental cues.

In sum, the results provide examples of three

broad categories of strategy change identi¢ed to be

core components of cognitive development (Rittle-

Johnson & Siegler, 1999). More detailed analysessuch as measurement of children’s latency to select

landmarks may illustrate the fourth category of

change, increasingly e¡ective execution of strate-

gies. At this juncture, our observations suggest that

Siegler’s (1996) emphasis on the adaptive qualities of

strategy change is warranted. His description of

variability and selection among strategies is consis-

tent with the verbal reports and observations of at-

tention when children confront the requirements of

a natural problem domain.

Of the problem domains that stimulate children’s

cognitive development, what are the special quali-ties of adventures beyond home range? Certainly,

freedom and fun. Like exploratory play, the only

aim of adventure may be new interactions, but the

events during adventures seem much more encom-

passing than the organized games and testing of

objects and roles that characterize much of home-

based play (Barker, 1979). In adventure, adults and

convention are not setting the goals and activities

are unsupervised. These circumstances are di¡erent

than arrangements for school curricula; studies of

children responding to task demands in natural

contexts may help us understand their strategic ad-

justments within arithmetic, spelling, and other for-mal problem domains.

For example, even when routines are taught, some

children will invent e⁄cient ways to solve arith-

metic problems (Resnick, 1976). Resnick suggested

that the discovery of a new strategy was the result

of children’s attempts to reduce the steps in the

taught routine, the opportunity to choose compo-

nent operations, and children’s con¢dence that they

could execute the taught routine. We noted similar

conditions for shortcuts during route reversal way

¢nding. Even when instructed to stay on familiar

paths, some children attempted more e⁄cientroutes. The environment included several paths that

would reach the same goal. The children could see

portions of their old path sequence and were most

familiar with paths close to home.

Anchorage to the familiar and the discovery of

e⁄cient routes are important components of way

¢nding, but a complete adventure also includes ele-

ments of risk, happenstance and wonder. Hart (1979)

provides fascinating evidence that children often go

out of their way to take ‘shortcuts’ that are fre-

quently longer and more hazardous than the origi-

nal routes that they know. Because of the

unknown, planning prior to such adventures is




often incomplete. It would not be an adventure if

the child could anticipate all of the events and re-

quirements of action. The challenge is to size up

new situations and react successfully. Because notall of the outcomes of planning decisions can be cer-

tain, the adventurer may even choose to leave some

decisions open for consideration during action. In

this sense, adventure fosters adjustment to chan-

ging circumstances (Rogo¡ et al., 1987). There is se-

lection among strategies to achieve a discovered

subgoal.

Our observations of changes in attention to land-

marks illustrate how this might happen. Eight-year-

olds showed more diverse scanning and named

more landmarks than the 12-year-olds. The active

patterns of attention by younger children indicatethat they were noting a variety of landmarks. How-

ever, we did not ¢nd evidence that they particularly

appreciated the usefulness of distant landmarks,

features of the skyline that can serve as reference

at several sites along a familiar route and provide

bearings when on a new route. It would have been

prudent to do so. Most of the children travelled on

new paths when returning home during their ¢rst

walk, either because they were asked to try new

routes or because they inadvertently stepped o¡

their original route. Measures of dispersion and ex-

tra travel indicated that 8-year-olds were more

likely than 12-year-olds to wander during these ex-cursions (cf ., Cornell et al ., 1989).

The changes in naming of landmarks indicate how

12-year-olds were becoming more e⁄cient. Their de-

liberations at choice points along their ¢rst walk

seem to have boosted selective attention to land-

marks at intersections during their second walk.

These landmarks are cues at places where action

must be directedöa heading maintained or a turn

initiatedöand hence are core elements of route re-

presentation (Siegel & White, 1975). In addition, un-

expected events during their ¢rst walk may have

reminded the 12 -year-olds to maintain attention tolandmarks that could be seen from o¡ route during

their second walk. In sum, the repeated observations

suggest that older children were learning to use

both route and survey-based representations for pro-

spective strategies, or methods to prevent and re-

cover from navigation errors. More generally, the

results indicate how Siegler’s (1996) characterization

of variability and selection of strategies may account

for the overlap of stages of spatial representation.

The creation and testing of strategies is espe-

cially apparent when adventures become serious

(Hill, 1999). Hill interviewed a 13-year-old boy and

a 9 -year-old girl who were rescued after they had

been lost together in the vicinity of their rural

neighborhood. When the children ¢rst realized that

they could not ¢nd their way home, they tried back-

tracking, retracing their steps. When they could nottell where they had been, they abandoned the plan

of ¢nding their house, and began random travelling,

hoping to encounter any house. When the wandering

strategy failed, they climbed a hill in order to en-

hance their view. As darkness fell, they moved into

an open area to spend the night. In the morning, the

boy used the open area as a base for a direction

sampling strategy, venturing forth some distance

along a bearing, breaking down small trees in order

to keep the base in view as he progressed. When the

base could no longer be seen, he returned to his

friend, then repeated the process in a di¡erent di-rection. Eventually, he heard a searcher calling.

The incident highlights how children faced with

the constraints and resources of a natural situation

are able to make £exible and deliberate use of envir-

onmental feedback to bootstrap a plan (Rogo¡ et al.,

1987).

In sum, as an example of the lessons of adventure,

observations of the expansion of home range by pre-

pubescent children have revealed problem solving

when solutions have not been taught. The problem

domainönavigation in large scale environmentsö

is vast and varied. It is culturally universal. There

seems to be strong motivations for both explorationand solution. While feedback concerning e¡orts can

sometimes be immediate, part of the problem is

forecasting and interpreting outcomes of actions.

These conditions allow for the natural selection of

cognitive strategies.

Notes

The authors’ research was supported by a grant from the Natural

Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to

E. Cornell.

We gratefully acknowledge the help of our colleagues Don

Heth and Je¡ Bisanz.

Correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed to

Edward H. Cornell, Department of Psychology, University of

Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E1. Email: ecornel-

[email protected]

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