How Do Puzzle Features Influence Parent and Child Spatial Talk?

• In Event: 3-152 - Supports for Facilitating Parent-Child Math Engagement During Home Activities

Integrative Statement

Spatial understanding contributes to children’s mathematical thinking and achievement (Cheng & Mix, 2014; Gunderson et al., 2012). Activities requiring spatial thinking such as puzzles can support children’s early spatial reasoning (Levine et al., 2012). Puzzles, when completed jointly with parents, also provide opportunities for children to hear rich spatial language, which is associated with stronger spatial skills later on (Pruden et al., 2011). The quantity and quality of parents’ spatial language varies, however, and it is possible that features of puzzles may elicit different types of spatial talk. This study sought to examine how varying the shapes included in a shape puzzle affects parent-child spatial talk. By offering multiple exemplars of shape types (i.e., three distinct triangles), we expected that an experimental puzzle would elicit more in-depth talk about shapes (discussing shape families and features) because it provides more opportunities for discussing similarities and differences across shapes rather than simply labeling shapes.

Children (ages 30 to 47 months, M = 38.57, SD = 5.40) and their parents (current N = 87, target N = 128) completed two shape puzzles in one lab session. The control puzzle contained nine different shape types, comparable to commercially-available shape puzzles. The experimental puzzle also included nine shapes, but included multiple exemplars of shapes (three triangles, three quadrilaterals, and three polygons with 5 or more sides). Parent and child talk was transcribed and analyzed to identify frequency of spatial words as well as other mathematical language. Analyses compared the number of tokens, or total frequency of shape words during the interaction.

As shown in Table 1, parents and children both tended to provide more total shape labels during the control puzzle than during the experimental puzzle (both p < .001). Follow-up analyses indicated that parents and children also used more shape label types, or unique shape words, during the control puzzle (both p < .001) and this difference remained after accounting for the proportion of unique shape types in the control and experimental puzzles. In contrast, parents used more relational words (comparison words such as “longer” or “same”) during the experimental puzzle (p = .006), suggesting that they were more likely to discuss shapes in ways that makes connections when multiple shape exemplars were present. Parents also used more number words during the experimental puzzle (p = .015)

These findings provide initial support for our prediction that the experimental puzzle would elicit more in-depth shape input to children. Our next step is to examine the contexts in which parents and children are using spatial words. We will code the complexity of parent and child statements and questions about shape. Additionally we will examine correlations and contingencies between parent and child shape talk to examine how the puzzle features may influence the quality of parent-child exchanges about shapes.

Authors

• Sarah H. Eason, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Kassie Kerr, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michelle A Hurst, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amy Claessens, University of Wisconsin
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan C. Levine, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author