Navigation and the developing brain Newcombe, Nora S
Journal of experimental biology,
02/2019, Letnik:
222, Številka:
Pt Suppl 1
Journal Article
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As babies rapidly acquire motor skills that give them increasingly independent and wide-ranging access to the environment over the first two years of human life, they decrease their reliance on habit ...systems for spatial localization, switching to their emerging inertial navigation system and to allocentric frameworks. Initial place learning is evident towards the end of the period. From 3 to 10 years, children calibrate their ability to encode various sources of spatial information (inertial information, geometric cues, beacons, proximal landmarks and distal landmarks) and begin to combine cues, both within and across systems. Geometric cues are important, but do not constitute an innate and encapsulated module. In addition, from 3 to 10 years, children build the capacity to think about frames of reference different from their current one (i.e. to perform perspective taking). By around 12 years, we see adult-level performance and adult patterns of individual differences on cognitive mapping tasks requiring the integration of vista views of space into environmental space. These lines of development are continuous rather than stage-like. Spatial development builds on important beginnings in the neural systems of newborns, but changes in experience-expectant ways with motor development, action in the world and success-failure feedback. Human systems for integrating and manipulating spatial information also benefit from symbolic capacities and technological inventions.
The Jelonki neighbourhood in Warsaw is a part of the capital’s Bemowo district. It is primarily a residential area, but it is characterized by mixed development, consisting of single-family and ...multi-family houses, blocks of flats, as well as contemporary, modern apartment blocks and gated estates. The specific urban layout of Jelonki has been shaped over the last hundred years. The successive stages of the formation of space in this part of Warsaw illustrate the changing architectural and social standards. From the pre-war garden city, through the “Przyjaźń” (“Friendship”) settlement subordinated to the socio-political conditions of Stalinist Poland and the prefabricated high-rise neighbourhoods of Jelonki, Lazurowa and Górczewska, built in the construction boom of the seventies and eighties, to the new housing projects of the free market economy post 1989.
It is very well known in the planning publications that when creating spacing development to a region or sub-region, it can be able to make more than an alternative consisting with the strategic ...directions overtaken from the actual development of region and the situational and developmental objectives needed. However, the difficulty facing the situational planning is in selecting one of these alternatives to be the best in order to make a balanced situational re-structure, and achieving the economic, social and civil objectives. The developmental situation elements in the regions and governorates, including (Karbala) impose themselves as situational power which implies the process of re-structural arrangement where the situational development is considered the active method for such arrangement. Thus, the difficulty of making decision in selecting any of the developmental alternatives seems easier for the situational planner as he has the programming methods and operations researches. The scientific method is used for making decision to suggest the developmental alternative which can achieve the strategic comprehension of the development elements and ensures the exploitation better to achieve the decree objectives. The method of decisions making theory is considered one scientific method which can be used in this regard. They mechanism of the decisions theory implies making more than one alternative to arrange the strategies and objectives in a matrix through which can make more than a case of making decision towards selecting the suitable situational strategy to achieve the objectives under the case of making decision brunt determined by the interdependent aspect in making decision. This necessitates knowledge of the developmental reality of the studied region or province. Therefore, the applied study of the developmental reality in the Karbala (region) province showed that there are two strategies that can be adopted to bring about spatial development in that province: the balanced growth strategy in the first, rational aspect drawn for sectors for development and the decision to maximize returns, and in the second aspect (cumulative) and the third (participatory), as well as the application proved the possibility of adopting the strategy of manufacturing and manufacturing for export in order to achieve a special type of goals at the lowest costs, whether in the case of certainty or risk, and this leaves the room clear for the decision maker to adopt any of the two strategies.
Gender differences in spatial aptitude are well established by adulthood, particularly when measured by tasks that require the mental rotation of objects (Linn & Petersen, 1985; Voyer, Voyer, & ...Bryden, 1995). Although the male advantage in mental rotation performance represents one of the most robust gender differences in adult cognition, the developmental trajectory of this male advantage remains a topic of considerable debate. To address this debate, we meta-analyzed 303 effect sizes pertaining to gender differences in mental rotation performance among 30,613 children and adolescents. We found significant developmental change in the magnitude of the gender difference: A small male advantage in mental rotation performance first emerged during childhood and then subsequently increased with age, reaching a moderate effect size during adolescence. Procedural factors, including task and stimulus characteristics, also accounted for variability in reported gender differences, even when controlling for the effect of age. These results demonstrate that both age and procedural characteristics moderate the magnitude of the gender difference in mental rotation throughout development.
Public Significance Statement
This meta-analysis documents the development of gender differences in spatial reasoning, finding that boys first outperform girls on mental rotation tasks during primary school and that this male advantage subsequently increases with age into adolescence. Because children's spatial skills predict their later science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) achievement, addressing the gender difference in mental rotation early in childhood may help to minimize later gender disparities in STEM success.
This critical review paper scrutinizes development corridors as ‘dreamscapes of modernity’ and showcases of ‘future-making’. I argue that corridors have become dominant blue-prints for spatial ...development because of a specific way in which they express, perform and implement ‘desirable futures’. I refer to three strands of conceptual debates. The first discusses how futures are ‘made’ and can be empirically approached through practices of future-making. The second looks at imaginations of African futures in relation to images of the continent itself. The third takes the empirical example of development corridors in Africa to scrutinize their meaning as ‘dreamscapes of modernity’. At the end, I will revisit recent calls for closer integration between economic geography and development studies, to which I suggest to add a concern for post- and decolonial positions and ‘theory from the south’.
Rapid urbanisation has not only affected the division of urban administrative regions and economic development but also caused changes in land use patterns and urban-rural conflicts. Apart from being ...the main determinants of regional integration, urban agglomerations also represent a new form of spatial organisation to realise coordinated regional development. This study investigates China’s national urban agglomeration development planning, which is guided by government decision-making and various plans aimed at sustainable land use. We use the TF-IDF algorithm, NVivo and statistical methods to analyse the keywords of urban agglomeration policies and the correlation between keywords. We also compare the positioning goals, focus areas and development paths of urban agglomeration policies. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Urban agglomeration development planning mainly focuses on industrial construction, with additional emphasis on ‘ecology’, ‘service’, ‘cooperation’, ‘innovation’ and ‘region’ (2) On the basis of development and cooperation, urban agglomeration development planning puts forward research objectives and positioning suitable for development; (3) Urban agglomeration development should further develop modern agriculture, emergency systems, ecological construction and internal cooperation. This study’s findings describe new ideas found by comparing urban agglomeration policies, which is helpful to understand the basis of formulating urban agglomeration development planning policies in China, and look forward to the long-term planning for the development of regional integration characteristics in China.
•Local urban interaction focuses on the use of land space and sustainable development in the region.•The analytical framework and method of comparative urban agglomeration development planning are put forward.•The spatial layout and long-term planning of China’s regional integration development is analysed comparatively.•Modern agriculture, emergency systems, ecological construction and internal cooperation need urgent attention.
After almost two decades of life, the EJSD has come to an important shift in its organisation. This piece is the expression of the editorial team’s wish to guide the readers through the changes that ...have occurred, both in the journal’s editorial structure and in its technical arrangement. At the same time, it is an occasion to highlight the ideas upon which the new direction are founded.
While discussions are ongoing about the exact meaning of car dependence, its assessment has been primarily qualitative. The few quantitative approaches adopted so far have tended to analyze either ...high car use and ownership or a lack of public transport accessibility as indicators of car dependence. This study aims to quantitatively evaluate car dependence in Munich after merging these three aspects—car use, ownership, and lack of public transportation—and identify its associated potential spatial predictors. The exploratory approach is applied to traffic zones in the transit service area around Munich, Germany, which includes calculating an indicator for car dependence and its linkage with socio-spatial factors using multiple linear regression. For this purpose, traffic data from 2017 and census data from 2011 are used, which are the most recent available. It was found that car dependence is higher in suburban areas with low local numbers of employees, low land costs, and high average income tax payments. Identifying areas with higher car dependence and associated factors can help decision makers focus on or prioritize these areas in providing better access to alternative transportation and basic opportunities. Future research could focus on application in additional regions, using recent and aligned data, and further combinations with qualitative research.
The article presents the results of a study of the planning proposals put forward in the urban planning documents of the second half of the 20th - early 21st century for Novosibirsk. Given the ...changed context of planning system functioning, it is important to develop and apply new spatial models based on a strategic vision for the development of large cities. It is shown that the urban planning approach is the basis for the regulation and development of spatial planning despite the fact that the lack of comprehensive implementation today is contributing to its discrediting. Based on a comparison of strategic plans for large cities in Russia and abroad and Novosibirsk’s urban planning system development, principles of Novosibirsk functional and spatial organization in the 21st century are proposed.
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The article presents readers with a thematic issue of the journal
Regional Research of Russia
, dedicated to the selected results of long-term interdisciplinary academic research on the fundamental ...problems of modern Russia’s spatial development. The uniqueness of the design and content of these studies, conducted in 2009–2019, is revealed as part of a large-scale scientific megaproject. The article describes the goals, content, and results of four research programs successively carried out within its framework: “Fundamental Problems of Spatial Development of the Russian Federation: Interdisciplinary Synthesis” (2009–2011); “The Role of Space in Russia’s Modernization: Natural and Socioeconomic Potential” (2012–2014); “Russia’s Spatial Development in the 21st Century: Nature, Society, and Their Interaction” (2015–2017); “Spatial Restructuring of Russia Taking into Account Geopolitical, Socioeconomic and Geoecological Challenges” (2018–2019). These programs are distinguished by methodological, subject, and organizational continuity. The multifaceted results of research within the framework of the last three programs are published in Russian in the monograph “Challenges and Policy of Russia’s Spatial Development in the 21st Century” (2020). The ten articles in this issue reflect the most important subjects presented in the monograph.
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