Interpretation of the Spatial Prepositions 'in front of' and 'behind'

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Abstract
Children aged 4 to 9 years and adults were asked to place a cube or a ball 'in front of or 'behind' a featuredor a nonfeatured-object. Although most children and adults responded on the basis of the inherent features of the object, a significant number of adults responded to the observer orientation cue. As expected, the nonfeatured-object task was difficult for the children, but they did not respond randomly; like the adults, most of them used the observer orientation cue. The results were discussed with reference to an analogy with over-extensions resulting from a child's unfamiliarity with linguistic alternatives, Piaget's theory of the development of spatial concepts, and the preferred explanation of responses determined by a prominent cue masking competing cues.

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