Keeping Behavior in Context: A Dynamic Systems Account of a Transition in Spatial Recall Biases

In location memory tasks, young children show biases toward reference axes, whereas older children show biases away from axes. As predicted by a dynamic systems model, this transition is gradual and varies across target location (Schutte & Spencer, 2009). Here we tested whether task context would influence the transition by testing children in a sandbox memory task that varied in several ways from Schutte and Spencer’s task, with the key difference being the salience of boundaries. In this task context, the transition was delayed but occurred gradually. These results provide further evidence for the context-dependent nature of behavior over development.