To determine at what age spatial contextual cues become compelling to human children, and whether chimpanzees find them as compelling as do humans, a block-placement pattern completion task was presented to 60 human children ages 18-71 months and to 7 adult chimpanzees. Four measurements of block placement were made: 1) orientation matching, alignment with the display, positioning in the display, and block rotation, as well as consistency across trials on all of these parameters. Children progressively match more display parameters in placement of the test block with age. Of all the parameters, the overall orientation of pattern elements was the earliest and most compelling to the children. Children as young as 18 months spontaneously matched orientation in the placement of their blocks. Orientation matching was followed with age by display alignment, spacing, and finally block rotation, respectively. The chimpanzees did not spontaneously follow the display pattern in their positioning of the test block. However, there is congruence in the importance of these parameters between human and chimpanzee participants, although it manifests in different ways across species.