Research Interests

Location Memory
My primary research interest is spatial cognitive development. Much of my work examines how children and adults remember where things are in their environments. Remembering locations is a fundamental aspect of human functioning. Even simple tasks, such as getting to work or preparing a snack, would be difficult without the ability to remember location information. To remember the vast number of locations in the environment, children and adults need some way to organize spatial information. My research focuses on how children and adults form spatial categories (i.e., groups of locations) to facilitate memory. For example, my previous research has focused on how children and adults use visible boundaries, spatiotemporal experience (i.e., visiting nearby locations close together in time), and semantic category cues to organize locations into groups. The goal of my research program is to understand howchildren and adults use particular cues to form spatial categories in specific task contexts and to understand how spatial category formation facilitates memory for locations.

Much of this work uses a simple location-learning task to assess memory for locations. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-old children and adults learn the locations of 20 miniature objects in an open, square box. The locations to be learned are marked by dots on the bottom of the box. First, participants watch as a researcher places the objects one at a time on the dots. Then, the objects are removed and participants are asked to place the objects on the correct dots. Learning trials continue until they can correctly place all 20 objects. Following learning, participants complete a test phase in which they attempt to replace the objects in the correct locations without the aid of the dots. After participants leave, researchers record the x- and y-coordinates of their placements to determine how accurately they remembered the locations and to assess how they organized the locations into groups to facilitate memory.

Current and future projects will continue to examine the cues people use to organize locations into groups and how organizaton and memory processes evolve over time. For example, how do object features affect the ways in which people group objects and their locations? How do organization and memory processes differ among children and adults with and without attention difficulties? These projects will provide important information about the dynamics of spatial categorization and memory processes.

Related Publications

Plumert, J. M., & Hund, A. M. (2001). The development of location memory: What role do spatial prototypes play? Child Development, 72, 370-384.

Hund, A. M., & Plumert, J. M. (2002). Delay-induced bias in children's memory for location. Child Development, 73, 829-840.

Hund, A. M., Plumert, J. M., & Benney, C. J. (2002). Children's ability to form spatial groups: The role of spatial and temporal contiguity. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 82, 200-225.

Hund, A. M., & Spencer, J. P. (2003). Developmental changes in the relative weighting of geometric and experience-dependent location cues. Journal of Cognition and Development, 4, 3-38.

Hund, A. M., & Plumert, J. M. (2003). Does information about what things are influence children's memory for where things are? Developmental Psychology, 39, 939-948.

Cognitive Stability and Flexibility
A second research interest is category stability and flexibility. Stability enables people to respond similarly when faced with similar situations or goals. In contrast, flexibility enables people to respond in different ways when faced with differing situations or goals. My work focuses on whether children and adults can stably and flexibly organize locations into groups or categories. For example, can children and adults use the temporal order in which they experienced nearby locations or semantic cues to organize the locations into groups that are both stable (i.e., similar across time) and flexible (i.e., changing in response to differences in task experience)? Sometimes these projects involve additional assessments of stability and flexibility, including a picture sorting task or a modified version of the dimensional change card-sorting task.

Current projects examine the stability and flexibility with which children and adults use visible boundaries to organize locations into categories. They employ variations of the memory task described above that allow us to track similarities and differences in performance across repeated experiences.

Related Publications

Hund, A. M., & Plumert, J. M. (2005). The stability and flexibility of spatial categories. Cognitive Psychology, 50, 1-44 .

Hund, A. M., & Foster, E. K. (2007). The stability and flexibility of spatial categories based on object relatedness. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Landmark Relations Shape Spatial Communication and Memory
A third focus of my research involves how landmarks influence spatial memory and communication. The goal of this work is to understand how children and adults select features to serve as landmarks and how using these landmarks affects the ways they interact with their environment. Recent experiments investigated how 3- and 4-year-old children and adults use the proximity term by to describe the relation between objects and a landmark.

Current and future projects will investigate how children and adults use landmarks to make sense of their environment. In particular, this work explores the features that influence landmark selection and the implications of landmark use for remembering locations. Do children and adults select the same types of features as landmarks? Is using landmarks an efficient way to find our way from place to place? Does using landmarks influence how we remember where things are? Do we tend to think that things are closer to landmarks than they really are? This work will extend our understanding of the ways in which landmarks influence spatial cognition.

Related Publications

Hund, A. M., & Plumert, J. M. (2007). What counts as by? Young children's use of absolute and relative distance to judge nearbyness. Developmental Psychology, 43, 121-133.

Hund, A. M., & Naroleski, A. R. (2007). Young children's use of relative distance when remembering and communicating about locations in relation to landmarks. Manuscript submitted for publication.

The Dynamics of Skillful Wayfinding
A fourth research interest is wayfinding—how do people find their way from place to place? In particular, how do environmental features, strategies and preferences, and learning experience shape skillful wayfinding? Previous research used a fictitious model town to specify direction-giving and following preferences and skills related to wayfinding. More recently, we have examined relations between wayfinding in a large-scale environment (e.g., a university building) and a small-scale environment (e.g., a model of the building), particularly how learning experience in one setting affects wayfinding in diverse settings. Current and future projects will specify how experience shapes wayfinding.

Related Publications

Hund, A. M., & Minarik, J. L. (2006). Getting from here to there: Spatial anxiety, wayfinding strategies, direction type, and wayfinding efficiency. Spatial Cognition and Computation, 6 , 179-201.

Hund, A. M., Hopkins, K. M., & Seanor, B. D. (2007). Recipient perspective and descriptive features determine the efficiency with which people give and follow directions during wayfinding. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Other Research Interests
  Cognitive Development
  Cognitive Flexibility
  Categorization
  Memory
  Dynamic Systems Approaches

Opportunities for Student Involvement in Research
Undergraduate and graduate students are invited to participate in ongoing research projects and/or to plan and carry out related projects. Student members of our research team will be involved in all aspects of the research process, gaining valuable hands-on experience with cognitive and developmental research.

Skills and Experience Gained
Students participating in research in my laboratory gain valuable skills that illustrate and extend concepts learned in coursework. Research experience is necessary for admission to graduate school in psychology. Skills gained through research participation also are helpful in pursuing graduate study in other fields and in securing employment after graduation. The following is a list of skills and experience gained through research experience in my lab:

• Hands-on experience with research in laboratory and school settings
• Experience working with children (preschool-aged through adolescence)
• Computer and technology skills: Word processing; Data entry and management (e.g., spreadsheets); Statistical analysis; Digital photography and editing
• Reading and understanding journal articles
• Critical and creative thinking skills
• Oral presentation skills
• Written communication skills
• Research presentation skills
• Interpersonal communication skills: Communicating with parents, teachers, child participants, and adult participants; Communicating with research team members; Interacting with children and adults who participate in our studies
• Training in research ethics
• Training in experimental research methods in cognitive and developmental psychology
• Teamwork skills
• Leadership experience
• Knowledge and appreciation of cognitive development, memory, and spatial cognition

Expectations
Undergraduate students typically enroll in PSY 290 Research Apprenticeship or PSY 287 Independent Study. Undergraduate students with experience in my laboratory can also enroll in PSY 390 Advanced Research Apprenticeship. Students are expected to contribute 6-9 hours per week to research work in exchange for course credit. Students also must attend a weekly laboratory meeting. These meetings include training in research ethics and methods, discussion of ongoing projects in our lab, and discussion of findings from related cognitive and developmental research. Often, students read articles in preparation for these discussions.

Students will work closely with other members of the research team, gaining experience with all aspects of our projects. These experiences typically include participant recruiting via mailings and telephone calls; meeting with teachers, parents, children, and adults to discuss our research projects; behavioral data collection with child and adult participants; data entry and management; statistical analyses and interpretation; and oral and written presentation of our findings.

Students interested in discussing research opportunities should contact me via e-mail at amhund @ilstu.edu or telephone (438-7863), or in person (446 DeGarmo).