Coding Locations Relative to One or Many Landmarks in Childhood, 2019
Cognitive development studies how information processing in the brain changes over the course of ... more Cognitive development studies how information processing in the brain changes over the course of development. A key part of this question is how information is represented and stored in memory. This study examined allocentric (world-based) spatial memory, an important cognitive tool for planning routes and interacting with the space around us. This is typically theorized to use multiple landmarks all at once whenever it operates. In contrast, here we show that allocentric spatial memory frequently operates over a limited spatial window, much less than the full proximal scene, for children between 3.5 and 8.5 years old. The use of multiple landmarks increases gradually with age. Participants were asked to point to a remembered target location after a change of view in immersive virtual reality. A k-fold cross-validation model-comparison selected a model where young children usually use the target location's vector to the single nearest landmark and rarely take advantage of the vectors to other nearby landmarks. The comparison models, which attempt to explain the errors as generic forms of noise rather than encoding to a single spatial cue, did not capture the distribution of responses as well. Parameter fits of this new single-versus multi-cue model are also easily interpretable and related to other variables of interest in development (age, executive function). Based on this, we theorize that spatial memory in humans develops through three advancing levels (but not strict stages): most likely to encode locations ego-centrically (relative to the self), then allocentrically (relative to the world) but using only one landmark, and finally, most likely to encode locations relative to multiple parts of the scene. Author summary As children get older, they develop better ways to store information in memory. Here we investigate one key aspect of this: how they remember locations in a scene. We asked children from 3 to 9-years-old to remember a target location inside a virtual reality (VR) scene, and then to point to it after they had been 'teleported' to a new location within the scene. Young children in particular often made a certain kind of (relatively minor) error. PLOS Computational Biology | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.
Extreme cases of sexual, physical and emotional abuse in childhood create a highly traumatized in... more Extreme cases of sexual, physical and emotional abuse in childhood create a highly traumatized individual that suffers persistent dissociations from these experiences (one of the main symptoms of PTSD). These symptoms are highly congruent with the symptoms of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), whereby the person dissociates from their "host personality" and enters different personalities in order to escape their reality-all the while remaining unconscious of the process of dissociation or the actions that occur with each personality. This paper aims to study how traumatic experiences increase the likelihood of developing DID and how these traumatic experiences contribute to the formation of the several personas resulting from DID. Moreover, it will assess the effect of traumatic memory recall on dissociations and the validity of events that are recalled by the patient, as well as define what dissociative amnesia means.
In this research paper, I have chosen to discuss Hegel and Marx’s views on alienation and the rol... more In this research paper, I have chosen to discuss Hegel and Marx’s views on alienation and the role it plays in modern society. I will provide a comparison between their views on labor and alienation. Firstly, I will differentiate between Hegel’s abstract notion of work, and Marx’s material conception of labor. Secondly, I will explain how they have congruent views involving the human relation with nature, yet I will also differentiate their approaches to the human/material relationship and its affect on labor. Moreover, I aim to highlight how Hegel places labor in a “positive light” whereas Marx does the opposite through explaining the effect of capitalist society on the modes of production.
Spatial memory is the metaphorical hook on which our everyday experiences hang. One way of thinki... more Spatial memory is the metaphorical hook on which our everyday experiences hang. One way of thinking about the development of spatial memory is as a progression from (a) egocentric (self-based) codings to (b) simple allocentric (world-based) codings relative to just one spatial reference to (c) codings using multiple allocentric spatial references together. We re-examined that timeline in a simplified virtual environment. Children aged 3-5 years saw a virtual penguin in relation to symmetric landmarks and then recalled its location after being ‘teleported’ to a new viewpoint. We found that children aged 3.5-4.0 years successfully used a single-landmark recall strategy, which is even younger than our previous work with a more cue-rich environment (Negen, Heywood-Everett, Roome & Nardini, 2017). Children succeeded at multiple-landmark allocentric recall at age 4.0-4.5 years, which is also younger than our previous findings in a more cue-rich environment. In addition, an inhibition measure was found to be a significant predictor of single-landmark strategies and recall accuracy. These findings suggest that single- and multi-landmark allocentric recall emerge earlier than previously thought, and that executive functions may form a bottleneck in environments that are not purposefully simplified to have fewer cues than naturalistic environments.
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