Parents’ Spatial Language Scaffolds Pre- and Full-Term Infants’ Mental Rotation Skills

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

The roots of spatial reasoning are established early in life - even infants can mentally rotate objects (e.g., Slone et al., 2018). Spatial language aids spatial reasoning by highlighting spatial patterns through providing categorical labels and boundaries in the continuous space (Roseberry et al., 2012). Spatial skills are amenable to improvement (e.g., Uttal et al., 2013). For example, parents’ use of spatial terms scaffolds children’s spatial reasoning through children’s spatial language (Pruden et al., 2011). Previous research emphasizes relations between preschoolers’ spatial performance and their exposure to or use of spatial language (e.g., Casasola et al., 2020). Less is known about whether infants’ spatial reasoning might also benefit from spatial language input. Here, we examine the concurrent link between parental spatial language input and infants’ mental rotation skills. We further analyze this relationship between preterm infants (PT), born before the 37 weeks gestational age, and full-term (FT) infants since pre- and post-natal challenges preterm infants experience might invoke group differences.
Ninety-nine infants (Mage=19.90months, SD=1.37, 45 PT) were recruited. We recorded 10-minute parent-infant play sessions and coded parental spatial and general linguistic input. Parental spatial input included size, shape, features, locations, orientation or transformation of entities, spatial relations between entities, or deictic words (e.g., small, square, edge, next to, above, turn, there). The total spatial input was divided by the duration of the play session. Linguistic complexity of the input was also coded through separating clauses into simple (i.e., clauses with single predicate) and complex clauses (i.e., clauses with multiple predicates such as conjunctions, relatives). The parental linguistic complexity was measured by the percentage of complex clauses to total clauses. To measure infants’ mental rotation, we adapted the habituation paradigm of Frick and Möhring (2013) to a preferential looking paradigm using the SMI eye-tracking device. Infants were familiarized with different events of objects moving down and rotating in several angles, and then were tested with three different angular rotations: 0º, 90º, and 135º orientations. Infants’ looking times to the impossible events on one side of the screen over total looking time were calculated.
Parental spatial input did not differ with respect to neonatal status, p=.485, yet linguistic complexity input differed favoring FT infants, p=.031. For both groups, infants’ looking times to the impossible vs. possible events at test did not differ. However, for 90º orientation, a hierarchical linear regression analysis showed that preference to impossible event was predicted by parental spatial input (β=.338, p=.012) and neonatal status (β=-.503, p=.053), controlling for age and parental linguistic complexity, R2=15.20%, F(4,55)=2.464, p=.056. There was no significant interaction between spatial input and neonatal status on preference to 90º impossible event, p=.961.
Earlier research highlighted the link between spatial language and performance of spatial tasks during preschool ages. The current study adds to this literature, revealing the concurrent role of parents’ use of spatial terms on infants’ mental rotation skills as early as 19-months. Furthermore, a specific type of parental input, spatial input in current study, related to infants’ spatial reasoning regardless of neonatal status.

Authors

• Erim Kızıldere, University of California - Davis
  Presenting Author

• Mert Kobaş, Koç University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Işıl Doğan, Koç Üniversitesi
  Non-Presenting Author

• Asli Aktan-Erciyes
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ece Demir-Lira, University of Iowa
  Non-Presenting Author

• İpek Akman
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tilbe Göksun, Koç University
  Non-Presenting Author