Poster #27 - Could Executive Function Predict Spatial Ability in Early Years? A Preliminary Study

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Executive Function (EF) and Spatial Ability (SA) are widely believed to play the key roles in early cognitive development. The existing studies have confirmed that they both could predict the mathematic achievement in middle childhood (Bull, Espy & Wiebe, 2008; Best, Miller & Naglieri, 2011; Clark, Pritchard & Woodward, 2010; Rohde & Thompson, 2007). The relationship between EF and SA, however, has not been empirically explored, which has hindered the progress in understanding the complicated relationships among EF, SA and mathematic achievement. As one of the key domains of EF, Working Memory has also been proved to play an important role in spatial rotation and reasoning (Miyake et al., 2001). Therefore, we hypothesized that EF might be able to predict the early development of Spatial Ability. To examine this hypothesis, we conducted a preliminary study in Chinese kindergartens to address the following two questions: (1) Are there any significant age and gender differences in Executive Function and Spatial Ability? (2) Could Executive Function predict Spatial Ability in the early years?

A total of 101 Chinese preschoolers (31 3-year-olds, 42 4-year-olds, 28 5-year-olds) were randomly sampled from two Hong Kong kindergartens. They were invited to complete four executive tasks and six spatial tasks, in individual sessions. The executive tasks include the Tapping game, the Tower of Hanoi, the Head Toes Shoulder and Knee task (HTSK), and the Dimensional Change Card Sort task (DCCS). The spatial tasks included Orientation task (OT), the Figure-based Block Building game (FBBB), the 3-D Tangram Puzzle (TP), the Paper Folding game (PF), the Map Task (MT), and the Free Block Building game (FBB). The act of successfully completing these tasks by these preschoolers was scored and calculated.

A set of ANOVAs found significant age differences in all the EF tasks and most of the SA tasks such as OT, FBBB, TP and PF, Fs > 1.31, ps < 0.05. No significant age differences were found in MT and FBB. No significant gender differences were found in all the EF and SA tasks, Fs < 1.97, ps > 0.05. Correlation analysis were conducted to explore the possible relationships between EF and SA, and the results indicated that all the EF tasks were correlated with the SA tasks except for the MT and FBB. Accordingly, a hierarchical regression analysis was conducted with SA score as the dependent variable. In Step One, we entered Age and Gender to control for age and gender effects. In Step Two, we entered EF to examine its contribution to the variation of SA. The results indicated that: (1) Age and Gender could jointly contribute to 66.8% of the variation in SA; and (2) EF could significantly predict 8.8% of variance in SA. This finding provides empirical evidence to support our hypothesis that EF predicts SA in early years. However, this study has very limited sample thus a large-scale study is needed to consolidate the relationship between EF and SA.

Authors

• Dandan Wu, Macquarie University
  Presenting Author

• Jin Sun, The Education University of Hong Kong
  Non-Presenting Author