Poster #43 - Contributions of Executive Function to Spatial Thinking in Preschool Children

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Spatial thinking refers to a collection of related skills including shape and size recognition, the identification and memory of locations of objects, and the understanding of relationships between objects (Newcombe, 2010). Spatial thinking is not only necessary for accomplishing everyday tasks such as packing a suitcase for an upcoming trip or using a map to locate a building on campus, but it is also highly predictive of future entry into, and success in, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields (Wai et al., 2009; Lubinski, 2010). We know that children begin to perform above chance on spatial tasks during the preschool years and these individual differences persist well into adulthood (Levine et al., 2012, Hawes et al, 2015). Consequently, identifying factors and experiences that contribute to the development of spatial thinking has become increasingly important. Several psychological and cultural factors have been identified as factors that influence individual differences in spatial thinking such as parent’s use of spatial language (Pruden et al., 2011) and puzzle and block play (Casey et al., 2008, Levine et al., 2012, Jirout & Newcombe, 2015), however, to date, very little is known about the contributions that cognitive factors make to individual differences in spatial thinking.
In this study, we investigated whether executive functioning, a specific set of cognitive skills, explains individual differences in spatial thinking. Recent findings show a relationship between working memory, one specific component of executive function, and a variety of spatial skills including mental rotation (Lehmann et al., 2014), mental folding, and perspective taking (Vander Heyden et al., 2017). We aimed to replicate the finding that working memory and spatial thinking are correlated as well as investigate whether other components of executive function (i.e. inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility) were also correlated with spatial thinking.
Four to six-year-old students were recruited from various day care centers and preschools in Miami-Dade County, FL. Participating children were assessed using a battery of spatial, executive function, and general intelligence tasks throughout two 30-minute sessions. We examined whether performance on executive function tasks (Flanker Test, Dimensional Change Card Sort Task, Corsi-Block Tapping Task, Digit Span, and Word Span) were predictive of performance on spatial tasks (Spatial Scaling Test, Block Design, and Children’s Mental Transformation Task) when controlling for variables such as receptive vocabulary and socioeconomic status. Preliminary analyses show a significant correlation between the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) Task, a measure of cognitive flexibility, and Block Design, a measure of spatial ability, r= .52, p < .05. The findings of this study show evidence that executive functions beyond working memory play a role in spatial thinking. Additionally, these findings provide us with gained insight into why there are individual differences in spatial thinking.

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Authors

• Nelcida Llissett Garcia, Florida International University
  Presenting Author

• Rachel Warman, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Karla Perera, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Evan Soto-Harrison, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shannon M Pruden, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author