Fig. 1.

Illustration of the testing environment for the current experiments. A, B, C, and D denote each of the four walls. In the black wall condition, all walls were black. In the blue wall condition, wall A was blue. C, R, N, and F illustrate the four corners in which the toy was hidden (with hiding location counterbalanced across participants). C, correct corner (i.e., corner where the toy was hidden); R, rotationally equivalent corner (i.e., the corner that is rotationally equivalent to the correct corner); N, near corner (i.e., the corner that is closest to the correct corner); F, far corner (i.e., the nonrotationally equivalent corner that is farthest from the correct corner). In previous studies using similar testing environments (see text), nonhuman species and human toddlers show characteristic breakdown patterns in their search for a hidden object, even when a feature, such as a colored wall, fully species the object's location. This characteristic breakdown pattern is to search at the correct corner (C) as well as the rotationally equivalent corner (R), suggesting that reorientation is based upon the geometry of the layout.