Children start to develop the basic skills that underlie map reading from the age of four, research suggests.
Experts from the University of East Anglia found that four-year-olds have spatial intelligence which enables them to use a scale model to find things in the real world – a precursor to map reading.
They said their findings, published in the journal Developmental Psychology, suggest that map reading ability may be cognitively simpler than previously thought.
For their research, the team looked at 175 two- to five-year-olds in what is thought to be the largest study of its kind.
