Embodiment effects in spatial memory from childhood to young adulthood: Searching for benefits but finding mainly costs

Several studies in the context of research on “embodied cognition” showed that moving your body can enhance cognition, if it modulates abstract mental representations. The current study investigates such effects in a spatial memory task across age. In study 1, children and adolescents from grades 1 to 10 and young adults (N = 148; 73 females) were tested in group-sessions. The task was to reproduce number series of increasing length. In the "embodied" condition, subjects walked to gymnastic mats on which the numbers from 1 to 9 were placed. In the "sitting" condition, the numbers were displayed on a screen (inter-stimulus interval 6 seconds). The order of conditions was counterbalanced across participants. All age groups, except the youngest, showed a deterioration of spatial memory performance in the embodied condition compared to the sitting condition. In study 2, young adults (n = 33, 18 women, mean age = 24.5 years) and children (n = 28, 11 girls, mean age = 7.3 years) were tested individually. The experimental design was identical to study 1, except that the size of the target fields was reduced to 50 cm2, and the ISI was reduced to 4 seconds. The results show no differences in spatial memory performance between the conditions for young adults or children. This indicates that “embodiment” does not always lead to cognitive performance enhancements. Instead, moving through space while thinking represents a dual-task situation, causing performance decrements in different age groups.

多项围绕具身认知（embodied cognition）的研究表明，若身体运动可调节抽象心理表征，则能够提升个体的认知能力。本研究针对跨年龄段的空间记忆任务，探究此类身体运动对认知的影响效应。实验1中，研究对象为1至10年级的儿童与青少年，以及青年成年人（总样本量N=148，其中女性73名），测试以集体施测形式开展，实验任务为复现长度递增的数字序列；在「具身」条件下，受试者需行走至铺有1至9数字的体操垫上完成任务，在「静坐」条件下，数字呈现在屏幕上（刺激间隔为6秒，inter-stimulus interval，简称ISI），两种条件的施测顺序在受试者间进行了平衡处理。结果显示，除最年幼组别外，其余所有年龄段组在「具身」条件下的空间记忆表现均较「静坐」条件出现衰退。实验2中，研究对象为青年成年人（n=33，其中女性18名，平均年龄24.5岁）与儿童（n=28，其中女童11名，平均年龄7.3岁），测试以个体施测形式开展，实验设计与实验1完全一致，仅调整了两处参数：靶刺激场的尺寸缩减至50平方厘米，刺激间隔（ISI）缩短为4秒，实验结果显示，青年成年人与儿童在两种条件下的空间记忆表现均无显著差异。这表明具身效应并非总能提升认知表现；相反，在思考过程中完成空间行走属于双任务情境，会导致不同年龄段群体的认知表现出现衰退。