Development and the Geometric Module

The research on children (Hermer & Spelke, 1994, 1996) shows that young children fail to use nongeometric cues only in re-orienting after being disoriented. Oriented children do use nongeometric cues, and dis-oriented children doing some task other than re-orientation also use nongeometric cues. These contrasting results rule out motivational and attentional explanations for the rotational error. The geometric module is thus modular at both input and output ends. At the input end, only the broad shape of the environment enters. At the output end, it is primarily used for re-orienting after being disoriented.