Developmental Changes in Map-Reading Skills

position of an object in a room from information contained on a map was assessed under 5 conditions: (a) map aligned inside the room (the pretest); (b) map aligned outside the room; (c) map rotated 180 ° inside the room; (d) map rotated 180 ° outside the room; and (e) map held vertically outside the room. The results indicated that children as young as 3 years could read a map aligned inside a room but that the ability to compensate for a rotated map did not develop until age 5. The position of the map inside or outside the room did not affect performance in either the ahgned or rotated conditions, with the exception that fewer egocentric errors were made in the rotated-outside condition than in the rotated-inside condition. The vertically held map was easily interpreted by most children who succeeded on the pretest, thus indicating that up and down are readily interchanged with near and far. All the results are discussed in relation to a 2-component model of map reading. As an activity requiring symbols to substitute for, to represent, sets of concrete objects and relations among objects in the world, the act of using a map is a prime example of the symbolic or semiotic function at work. More particularly, information about mapping skills may help clarify the results of developmental studies in which the drawing of sketch maps or the building of models has been relied on to assess internal cognitive representations of space