YOUNG CHILDREN’S ABILITY TO USE AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS AS MAPS BEVERLY PLESTER 1 ,JENNA RICHARDS 1 ,MARK BLADES 2 AND CHRISTOPHER SPENCER 2 1 Psychology Subject Group, Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry CV15FBU.K. 2 Department of Psychology, Universityof She/eld, She/eld S102TPU.K. Abstract In a series of three experiments we investigated four- and ¢ve-year old children’s ability to use aerial photo- graphs in identi¢cation and location tasks, including searching for hidden objects in a variety of types of hiding places. In the ¢rst two experiments we compared di¡erent representations. In Experiment 1 children completed the tasks using aerial photographs with oblique and vertical projections. Overall performance was better with the oblique photograph. Five-year-olds were more successful than four-year-olds. In Experiment 2 we compared the di/culty of di¡erent hiding places. Some hiding places were ‘distinctive’ones (i.e. unique places) and some were‘nondistinctive’ (e.g. one among several similar trees, or di¡erent places along the same boundary). The former were easier to locate, and the relationship between type of photograph and hiding place is discussed. In Experiment 3 children used an aerial photograph and a map that had been drawn from it. Using the photograph before the map improved success with the map, but there was no reverse e¡ect. Over- all the young children in these experiments showed a good ability to understand and use the aerial photo- graphs. # 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd Introduction Whether pre-school children are able to interpret and use iconic representations (such as maps and models) of real space has been investigated, using various types of representation. Children have been given location tasks in small spaces and in large, but con¢ned spaces (e.g. Piaget & Inhelder, 1956; Bluestein & Acredolo, 1979; Blades & Spencer, 1986; 1987a,b; Blades, 1991a,b; DeLoache, 1989). DeLoache (1989) found children below 33 months were unable to use a scale model to search for a hidden toy in a larger space, or conduct the search in the reversed direction. Such young children may not have had an understanding of correspondence between the mod- el and the room, or may not have realized that they needed to make use of that correspondence in their search. The required understanding had developed by the time the children were three or four months older. Bluestein and Acredolo (1979) found children of three years were very poor at seeing or using the correspondence between a simple map and a room in a similar toy-¢nding task, but nearly all four- and ¢ve-year old children were successful with the map oriented in the same direction as the room. Other researchers have also found that four-year- olds could use maps or models to ¢nd hidden toys in rooms or in a layout of paths (e.g. Blades & Spen- cer, 1986, 1990). Several factors might in£uence children’s ability to use a representation to ¢nd a location. The type of location may have an in£uence on children’s abil- ity (Blades & Cooke, 1994; Blades & Spencer, 1986; Loewenstein & Gentner, in press). Blades (1991b) found that three-, four- and ¢ve-year-olds could use a model representation of a space to identify unique objects in that space. Four-year-olds (but not three- year-olds) were able to use an aligned representa- tion to identify one of two identical objects in the space, but only ¢ve-year-olds could identify one of two identical objects with a nonaligned representa- tion. Finding a unique object only requires recogni- tion of the correspondence between the unique object on the representation and the same object in the space. But ¢nding one object among several identical objects requires attentionto the spatial re- lations between objectsFprojective, allocentric spa- tial cognition, as well as the spatial relation between self and objectFegocentric spatial cogni- tion. Journal of Environmental Psychology (2002) 22, 29^47 0272-4944/02/$-see front matter r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd doi:10.1006/jevp.2001.0245, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on