Relationship Between Growing Environment and Spatial Cognition

This study analyzed the relationship between early childhood growing environments and spatial cognition through a survey of the growing environments and a navigation test in virtual space. It revealed that lower directional orderliness in the road network of the environments was significantly associated with route selection efficiency in the navigation test. The presence of forests or rivers in the environment was significantly associated with an accurate cognition of the spatial relationships of landmarks in the test. These findings suggest that the directional orderliness of road networks and natural environmental features are influencial for spatial cognition development