Children's spatial behavior is differentially affected after traumatic brain injury.

Spatial behavior in 20 children with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and 20 healthy controls was investigated using the Kiel Locomotor Maze. Children had to remember defined locations in an experimental chamber with completely controlled intra- and extra-maze cues until learning criterion was reached. In a second experiment, spatial orientation strategies were assessed. Children with TBI were shown to be impaired in spatial learning and spatial memory. Spatial orientation was found to be deficient even in cases where spatial learning and memory proved to be unimpaired, especially in tasks that demanded the use of relational place strategies. Children who suffered a TBI at an early age proved to be more severely impaired in spatial learning and orientation than older children.

Spatial information transfer from virtual to real versions of the Kiel locomotor maze.

The Kiel locomotor maze requires participants to choose five targets from among 20 locations marked by small red lights on the floor of a dimly lit circular environment having four wall-mounted extramaze cues and two intramaze cues at floor level. In the present study, acquisition of the real task was examined in 11-year-old children following prior accurate training in a virtual version, following misleading virtual training, or following no training. The virtual version was displayed on a desk-top computer monitor. Acquisition testing in the real maze was either locomotor or non-locomotor. Good transfer was achieved from virtual to real versions. Children's exploration of the real maze prior to real maze acquisition training revealed a clear transfer of spatial information previously learned in the virtual version. Children taught the correct target configuration in the simulation made fewer errors and more rapid, confident responses to targets in the real maze than children given no training. However, acquisition was also better following misleading training than no training, suggesting that a non-specific components of performance also transferred. Male superiority was only seen following misleading training, which was interpreted in terms of male superiority in mental rotation. After acquisition, a single probe trial was performed, in which proximal cues and participants' starting position were rotated, but this had equivalent effects on all groups' performance. It is clear that transfer of spatial information occurs from the simulated Kiel maze to the real version. This has implications for its use in diagnosis and training.

Development of spatial memory and spatial orientation in preschoolers and primary school children.

The present study addresses the question of what kind of information children use when orientating in new environments, if given proximal and distal landmarks, and how spatial memory develops in the investigated age groups. Ten 5-year-old, ten 7-year-old and ten 10-year-old children were presented with the 'Kiel Locomotor Maze', containing features of the Radial Arm Maze and the Morris Water Maze, in order to assess spatial memory and orientation. Children had to learn to approach baited locations only. Task difficulty was equated with respect to the children's age. Training was given until the children reached criterion. During testing, the maze configuration and response requirements were systematically altered, including response rotation, cue rotation, cue deletion and response rotation with cue deletion in order to assess the spatial strategies used by the children. During training and testing, working-memory errors (WM), reference-memory errors (RM) and working-reference memory errors (WR) were recorded. As expected, no difference between age groups appeared during training, thus confirming comparable task difficulty across age groups. During testing, age groups differed significantly with regard to the orientation strategy used. The 5-year-olds were bound to a cue strategy, orientating towards local, proximal cues. The 10-year-olds mastered all tasks, thus displaying a place strategy, being able to use distal cues for orientation, and were even able to do so after being rotated 180 degrees. The 7-year-olds proved to be at an age of transition: five of them were bound to a cue strategy, five children were able to adopt a place strategy. The differences in the orientation strategies used by children of different age groups was reflected by the sum of errors they made, also by RM. WM were found to be rare, especially in older children. We conclude that preschoolers use a cue strategy, that the development of place strategies occurs during primary school age and seems to be complete by the age of 10 years.

Remote memory in patients with acute brain injuries.

Remote memory was investigated in an unselected sample of 26 patients with either unilateral tumours in the temporal lobes or traumatic brain injuries. Six patients underwent excisions within the left temporal lobe, and nine patients were operated on within the right temporal lobe. In both groups, patients with excisions including and sparing the hippocampal formation were studied. Their performance was compared to that of 11 patients with moderate to severe head trauma and to a normative sample of 214 healthy controls. Remote memory was assessed using a famous events test with items of extremely low salience that had been proven to be of low difficulty for those old enough at the time of the event's actuality. The results show severely disturbed retrograde memory functions in the left temporal tumour group. These patients achieved similar scores to patients with severe traumatic brain injury. Right hemispheric patients showed a pattern of results comparable to that of healthy controls. The strongest effects were in the free recall part of the test. In most of the patients, no graded memory loss was observable. No consistent association to recent memory function could be identified. Since most of the remote memory test items used denoted famous names which were cued by rich semantic information, the type of deficit seen may be best understood in terms of a specific dysfunction of the semantic stores containing information about famous proper names.