Wayfinding is the ability to learn and recall a route through an environment. Theories of wayfinding suggest that for adult and children to learn a route successfully, they must have repeated experience of it.<\/p>\n Researchers from the University’s School of Psychology, led by Dr Jamie Lingwood, conducted an experiment to investigate whether children could learn a route after only a single experience of the route.<\/p>\n Virtual mazes<\/strong><\/p>\n A total of 80 participants from the United Kingdom in four groups of 20 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds, 12-year-olds, and adults were shown a route through a 12-turn maze in a virtual environment. At each junction, there was a unique object that could be used as a landmark.<\/p>\n Participants were “walked” along the route just once (without any verbal prompts) and then were asked to retrace the route from the start without any help.<\/p>\n Nearly three quarters of the 12-year-olds, half of the 10-year-olds, and a third of the 8-year-olds retraced the route without any errors the first time they travelled it on their own.<\/p>\n The research has been published in the\u00a0Journal of Experimental Child Psychology<\/em>.<\/p>\n Implications<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr Lingwood, said: “The findings of our study suggest that many young children can learn routes, even with as many as 12 turns, very quickly and without the need for repeated experience.<\/p>\n “Our research has implications for previous theories of wayfinding that emphasize the need for extensive experience.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Liverpool press release: New research from the University of Liverpool suggests that children as young as eight can learn a route after only a single experience… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[526],"tags":[45,160,74,73,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25601"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25639,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25601\/revisions\/25639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/GPS.jpg\")
New research from the University of Liverpool suggests that children as young as eight can learn a route after only a single experience of it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n