The classic model room task: A symbol that doesn’t measure symbolism

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Authors

Catherine Sayer¹ , Martin Doherty¹

1. University of East Anglia

Conference / event

Lancaster Conference on Infant & Early Child Development, August 2022 (Lancaster, United Kingdom)

Poster summary

This poster compares performance on a classic hiding game, using a room and its scale model, with pre-school children’s abstract spatial ability and understanding of mental representation. We found performance on the classic Model Room task only related to spatial abilities, potentially important in later science and mathematics education.

Keywords

Spatial correspondence, Model room task, False belief task, Theory of mind

Research areas

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences

References

1. DeLoache, J. S. (1987). Rapid change in the symbolic functioning of veryyoung children. Science, 238(4833), 1556–1557. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.2446392
2. Sayer, C. M., & Doherty, M. J. (2023). Understanding of spatial correspondence does not contribute to representational understanding: Evidence from the model room and false belief tasks. Developmental Psychology. 59(5), 976–986. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001508

Funding

No data provided

Supplemental files

No data provided

Additional information

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and / or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2023 Sayer et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.