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Description
Children with unilateral prenatal stroke show atypical cognitive profiles in the domain of visuospatial analysis. Working memory is inherent in many visuospatial tasks, but there has been little research looking at the role of memory in spatial processing in children with focal lesions (FL). This study was comprised of two experiments that assessed spatial memory development through the use of visual search tasks. The first experiment investigated how the number of search locations and length of delay before searching affected a child's ability to remember the hiding location and included 30 typically developing children (TD) and 32 children with FL, divided into five age groups; 1 year, 1 year 6 months, 2 years, 2 years 6 months, and 3 years. Performance was measured as the proportion of correct responses under conditions that increased the spatial array size (2, 4, and 6 cups) and temporal delay (1, 5, and 10 seconds). Results showed that children with focal lesion do not demonstrate deficits in spatial memory processing at this age. We saw a steady progression of spatial memory development with age in both TD and FL groups. Manipulation of the conditions showed that as the array size increased and delay length increased, children made more errors, and the performance of younger children was more impacted than older children. The second experiment was designed to look at performance in an older age range and included 35 TD children and 19 children with FL, divided into two age groups: a younger group with an average age of 3 year 6 months, and an older group with an average age of 6 years 4 months. Spatial configurations of the hiding locations were varied in three forms (an L shape, a diagonal line, and a horizontal line with two hiding locations), and the length of the delay varied as well (from 1 to 5 to 10 seconds). The average number of trials correct for the younger and older TD groups and the older FL group was compared based on the array configuration and on the time delay. Three-year-old children in the FL group were unable to complete the task, and therefore demonstrated deficits in spatial memory processing at this age. Once children were 6 years old, the FL group no longer performed differently than their peers. This task revealed that performance was significantly affected by both the spatial configuration of the hiding locations and the length of temporal delay. Results suggest that children with prenatal injury resemble the TD group in their progression of development with age. However, when the spatial configuration of hiding places becomes more complex and length of temporal delay increases, as in experiment 2, young children with prenatal injury reveal difficulties in encoding and recalling spatial information. Once children enter the early school age, they no longer show an atypical profile of spatial memory processing. This study extends our knowledge of spatial memory development in children and helps to further research with the population of children with focal lesions.
