The role of locomotor experience in the development of navigational memory

This study is about how people find their way around the world, meaning how people determine where they are, where they want to go, the best way to get there, and how they evaluate their progress as they move towards their goal. This kind of spatial memory, which I call navigational memory, presumably begins when people begin moving through the world independently. Here, I explore the roots of navigational learning just at the onset of independent locomotion.; In humans, independent locomotion normally occurs in two stages. First, infants go from being stationary to crawling, and then a few months later, they shift to another mode of locomotion, walking. The question at the heart of this thesis is whether navigational learning is continuous across the two modes of locomotion or whether navigational learning is linked to a specific mode of locomotion. To investigate this, I observed crawling and walking infants in a novel locomotor task—finding a hidden goal location in a large space—with either direct or distal landmarks. The central question of interest was whether infants' use of landmarks changed with amount of locomotor experience, style of locomotion, or age.; In the experiment one, I tested novice crawlers, experienced crawlers, and novice walkers with only distal landmarks. All infants with less than six weeks of experience, either crawling or walking, could not find their hidden mothers. However, all infants with more than six weeks of experience in their current mode of locomotion were highly successful at finding their mothers. In experiment two, I tested a second group of novice crawlers, experienced crawlers, and novice walkers in a similar task but with a direct landmark. Here too, the novice crawlers and walkers with less than six weeks of experience in their current mode of locomotion could not find their hidden mothers, while those with more experience could.; Taken together, these findings suggest that what infants learn about their spatial environment is inextricably linked to the specific movements they performed while learning it. Thus, any theory that accounts for the development of spatial memory must be embodied.