Caregiver and Child Spatial Language and Children’s Spatial Skills

• In Event: 3-227 - Relational Language and Math: Variation Across Types of Language and Math Activities

Integrative Statement

Spatial language and spatial cognition are intertwined throughout development. Children with larger spatial vocabularies outperform peers with more limited spatial vocabularies on spatial tasks (e.g., Pruden et al., 2011). In the present study, we examined caregiver and child speech during a play activity, focusing on their use of spatial, color and number words. We also explored the relation between caregiver and child speech and children’s performance on three spatial tasks.

Forty-eight 4-year-old children (24 male, 24 female) were assessed on their mental rotation (Picture Rotation Task, Quaiser-Pohl, 2003), mental transformation (Children’s Mental Transformation task, Levine et al., 1999), and the block design task. Next, children and their caregivers were invited to create a pattern of an elephant depicted on a laminated card using geometric shapes (see Figure 1). Caregiver and children speech was transcribed and the number of tokens was calculated for spatial, number, and color words.

All caregivers, except one, provided spatial language during the play activity. Caregivers provided the most tokens for locations (e.g., “under,” “left;” M = 25.79, SD = 15.39), spatial deictics (e.g., “here”, “there;” M = 17.13, SD = 10.40), continuous amounts (e.g., “a little,” “some;” M =13.26, SD = 9.75) and geometric shapes (e.g., “circle,” ”square;” M = 7.74, SD = 7.41). Caregivers also talked about color (e.g., “blue,” “yellow;” M = 13.02, SD = 10.96 tokens) and number (e.g., “three,“ M = 11.60, SD = 6.62 tokens). Children produced the most tokens for spatial deictics (M = 5.85, SD = 6.80) and locations (M = 5.77, SD = 5.51), and fewer tokens for geometric shapes (M = 2.51, SD = 2.87) and continuous amounts (M = 2.00, SD = 2.09). Figure 2 shows the average percent of total tokens that each speaker produced for the various categories of words.

Children whose caregivers used more tokens for pattern (e.g., “first,” “next”) scored higher on the mental rotation task, r = .315, p < .05, controlling for caregiver non-spatial tokens. In contrast, children whose caregivers provided more tokens for geometric shapes scored lower on the block design task, r = -.365, p < .05, controlling for caregiver non-spatial tokens. For children, the more tokens for location they produced, the lower their mental rotation, r = -.362, p < .05, and block design scores, r = -.362, p < .05. Interesting, children who used more color tokens also scored lower on the mental rotation task, r = -.362, p < .05.

These results provide insight into the language that caregivers and children use as they engage in pattern play. Locations and deictics were the most common spatial words for both caregivers and children, but these types of words were not those that were most related to children’s spatial performance. Rather, the results show that particular types of spatial words, such as pattern words, are more strongly related to children’s spatial performance while others, such as locations and colors, are negatively related to spatial performance.

Authors

• Marianella Casasola, Cornell University
  Presenting Author

• Christina Hogan, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ashley Ransom, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author