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Informed consent was obtained in writing from the guardians on behalf of the young participants, and verbal consent was obtained from the children. Either the guardians or participants could choose to stop the experiment at any time. All experiments and consent procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board at Harvard University for research on human subjects.
16 children (8 boys), aged 35 to 42 months (M = 39 months), were tested. Four additional children failed to complete the experiment. In all of the experiments, children were tested only in one experiment, and they were naïve to the experimental arena at trial 1.
Testing occurred within a circular, 3.66-m diameter room consisting of twelve curved wall panels (one of which was a spring-operated door that was indistinguishable from the other eleven panels from the inside of the testing space), soundproof walls, a solid light floor, and six circular lights arranged symmetrically around a circular fish-eye-lens camera mounted at the center of the 2.34-meter-high ceiling. At the room’s center was a rectangular enclosure composed of 1.02-meter-high white walls. One of the shorter walls served as the door (from inside the enclosure it was indistinguishable from the opposite wall) and was movable between two locations to create enclosures of 1.22 m by 1.37 m (a length ratio of 8∶9), or 1.22 m by 1.27 m (a length ratio of 24∶25). The corners were covered with 5-cm-wide panels, oriented 45° to both walls, behind which a sticker could be hidden.
Each child performed four trials in each arrangement of the enclosure, in a block design with array order counterbalanced across subjects. The hiding location was held constant across all trials for a given child but was counterbalanced across children. Children faced a different wall on each trial of each condition; the order of the four facing directions was counterbalanced across children.
A child entered the room with an experimenter while parents remained outside and observed the study on a video monitor. The experimenter then fixed the movable wall to one of the two distance settings. In all the experiments, children were motivated to search after disorientation through a hiding and finding game. First, the child chose a sticker and watched as the experimenter placed it behind one corner panel. Then the child was blindfolded and turned in place until disoriented (typically 3–4 rotations). Disorientation was checked by asking the child to point to the door while blindfolded; turning resumed if the child pointed correctly. After disorientation was confirmed, the experimenter stood behind the child, faced the child towards one of four predetermined directions, removed the blindfold, and encouraged the child to find the sticker. Once children made their first choice by reaching into the hiding location, the experimenter stopped the trial by preventing subsequent search attempts, retrieving the sticker, and moving onto the next trial. After the first block of trials, the movable wall was removed for the child to exit, and he/she was taken out of the room briefly. Upon returning, the experimenter attached the movable wall at the second distance setting before starting the second condition. The location of the first search (coded as the first corner flap lifted) was recorded from the video record.
Forty-eight children (24 girls), aged 18 to 24 months (M = 21 months) took part in the experiment. Six additional children failed to follow directions (e.g., cover his/her eyes) or to complete the experiment.
Children were tested in the same cylindrical room as in Experiment 1, furnished with a centrally placed, 97 cm by 97 cm square enclosure with contrasting pairs of opposite walls (see Figure 3). In the black/white condition, alternating walls were covered with black or white contact paper. In the gray condition, the walls were painted dark or light gray, matching samples provided by Lourenco et al. [32]. In the pattern condition, the walls were painted white and covered with black circles that were either 8.9 cm or 2.5 cm in diameter, spaced so as to equate their average brightness (by presenting the same total area of black dots on each wall) and to scale item density to item size (see Figure 2). Inverted opaque bowls at each corner served as the hiding locations.
Each child was tested in one condition. As in Experiment 1, children performed 4 reorientation trials with a single hiding place and four different facing directions; both hiding place and order of facing directions were counterbalanced across the children in each of the three versions of this experiment.
In contrast to Exp. 1, and following the procedure of past research with these displays [32], [36], the parent was present in the room and testing was performed by the experimenter and the parent together. While the experimenter stood outside of the enclosure, the parent picked up the child and stepped into the center of the enclosure. The experimenter called attention to the walls of the arena and then showed the child a small toy and made sure that the child attended to it as she placed it under one of the bowls. Then the parent picked up the child, covered or shaded the child’s eyes such that the child could not look down and track the location, and rotated in place 3–4 times. Meanwhile, the experimenter walked around the box while reminding the child to keep his or her eyes covered or closed. After the child was faced toward one wall and released, the parent stepped out of the box and stood next to the experimenter, who stood on the other side of the wall that the child faced. If the child expressed a desire for the parent to stay inside the box, the parent was instructed to stand quietly behind the child, with his/her gaze fixed directly ahead on the floor or into the child’s eyes (if the child looked up at the parent), until the child searched. The child was encouraged to find the toy. After the first search, coded by his/her lifting of one of the corner hiding containers, the experimenter retrieved the toy and moved on to the next trial.
Participants were 32 children aged 18–24 months (8 boys and 8 girls in each condition; mean age 21 months). Three additional children failed to cooperate or to complete the task.
The apparatus was the same as in the Pattern condition of Experiment 2 except for the lengths of the walls (92 cm and 102 cm), resulting in a subtly rectangular box. In the Congruent condition, the larger circles appeared on the walls that were closer to the center of the box. In the Incongruent condition, the larger circles appeared on the walls that were more distant from the center of the box.
Children were tested following the procedures of Experiment 2. Separate groups of children (n = 16 per group) were tested in the Congruent and Incongruent conditions. Within each condition, the hiding location was counterbalanced across children, the child’s facing direction was counterbalanced across trials, and the order of different facing directions was counterbalanced across children.
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