Parent Spatial Language Related to Child Spatial Language and Skills in Korea and the U.S.

• In Event: 2-139 - Spatial Symbols and Spatial Thought: How Language and Maps Shape the Development of Spatial Thinking

Integrative Statement

Children’s spatial language – their knowledge of shape names, featural adjectives, dimensional labels, orientation descriptors, and locative terms – is key to spatial cognition. Children acquire much of these spatial concepts and spatial terms in the home environment through language exchanges with parents. Indeed, parent spatial language relates to preschoolers’ spatial language and skills in U.S. samples (Pruden & Huttenlocher, 2011). Here we extend this line of inquiry to the different types of spatial language that parents and children in South Korea and the United States produce. We ask: Do South Korean and U.S. parents differ in the spatial language categories they use when interacting with children during a spatial task? Do children from the two cultures differ in their use of spatial language types in ways that align with their parents’ spatial language? Do parent and child spatial language types relate to children’s spatial skills (i.e., mental rotation performance), and if so, do associations generalize across both cultures?

Participants were 88 (40 South Korean, 48 U.S.) 4-year-olds (M=4.4, SD=0.59) with a parent. During a lab visit, parent-child dyads were asked to use magnets of different shapes and sizes to create a depicted figure. The parent-child interactions were video-recorded, transcribed, and coded to identify the number of spatial language types (distinct spatial words) parents and children used from five different spatial language categories (i.e., shapes, locations, orientations, dimensions, features). Prior to the parent-child interaction, children were also assessed on their mental rotation using an adapted version of the Picture Rotation Task (PRT; Quaiser-Pohl, 2003).

Results revealed significant differences in the distribution of spatial language types used by parents across the two cultures. U.S. parents used significantly more location and feature types, whereas South Korean parents used more orientation, shape, and dimension types, all p’s < .01 (Figure 1). Children’s spatial language types reflected the patterns of parents, providing additional evidence that parent’s spatial language is related to children’s spatial language (Figure 2). To investigate the relation between parent’s spatial language and spatial skill, children’s PRT scores were regressed on child age and the five parent spatial language type variables. In the South Korean sample, the model did not exhibit good fit, R-squared = .224, F (6,33) = 1.59, p = .181. In the U.S. sample, the model exhibited good fit, R-squared = .307, F (6,40) = 2.96, p = .017, but there were no significant predictors. When running the regression with the children’s spatial language types for the South Korean sample, the model did not exhibit good fit, R-squared = .18, F (6,33) = 1.19, p = .336. However, for the U.S. sample, the model exhibited good fit, R-squared = .313, F (6,40) = 3.04, p = .02, revealing child age, b = 2.65, t (46) = 2.63, p = .01, and children’s use of dimension types, b = -1.08, t (46) = -2.36, p = .02, as significant predictors, albeit in opposite directions. Findings and their implications will be further discussed.

Authors

• Daniel D. Suh, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Keumjoo Kwak, Seoul National University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marianella Casasola, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author