The early development of position constancy in a no‐landmark environment

Abstract

Position constancy was investigated in 7-, 11-, 14- and 19-month-olds in a no-landmark environment. The infants were passively rotated through six complete turns inside a circular unpatterned enclosure. The procedure was intended to inform the infant about the constant location of an event during body rotation and to test the infant's ability to retrieve the non-framed event site when no exteroceptive information specified the event location. The event was sometimes present and sometimes absent. Two levels of position constancy were tested during the phases with the event absent: a directional one and a positional one. If the infants oriented their head towards the side where the event should reoccur rather than towards the other side, they were presumed to be able to directionally localize the non- perceivable event location. If they adjusted their head orientation to the event location, they were presumed to be able to positionally localize the non-perceivable event location. The results indicate directional ability in 11-, 14- and 19-month-olds, and positional ability in 19-month-olds only.