Young children’s spatial communication in drawings and language

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

Children interpret layouts and objects differently for everyday navigation (Hermer & Spelke, 1996) and for symbol-guided navigation using maps and language (Dillon & Spelke, 2017; Learmonth et al., 2001). This differential treatment of layouts and objects even carries over to children’s symbolic production: When asked to draw simple arrangements of walls and objects, 4-year-old children tend to omit the walls composing the scene’s layout, but they include the scene’s objects (Dillon, in press). One possible explanation for children’s prioritization of objects over layouts in drawings is that children attend to objects more than layouts during everyday navigation and symbol-guided navigation (Dillon & Spelke, 2017; Doeller & Burgess, 2008). Another, not mutually exclusive possibility, is that the geometric properties of layouts, in particular their distance information (Dillon et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2012), are more difficult to draw than the geometric properties of objects.
Following a preregistered design and analysis plan, the present study explores whether children’s inattention to layouts drives layout omission in drawings. It does so by introducing an explicit communicative intent to the drawing task, requiring children to use their drawings to communicate the location of layout elements. To compare symbolic production in two different media, it contrasts a drawing condition with a language condition. If inattention to layouts is the reason for layout omission, then children should neither draw nor describe layouts. In contrast, if children communicate layout information in language but not in drawings, then there may be a particular difficulty to depict the layout geometry on piece of paper.
We planned to include 80 four-year-olds in the study. Due to the suspension of in-person research, we peeked at and analyzed the data collected so far (N = 23). Additional N = 8 children participated in the study but met the preregistered exclusion criteria and were not included in the analyses.
In the study, children were playing a game where the goal was to draw or describe the location of a target disk, hidden in a large ‘fort’ with an arrangement of walls and objects, to help the research assistant find it. Some of the target locations were better defined by layout elements (e.g. in front of a wall) while others were better defined by object elements (e.g. next to one object and far from the walls; see Figure 1). Once children drew or described the location of the target, the research assistant searched for the target after each of the six trials.
We evaluated which spatial elements children were most likely to include in language and drawings. Using a planned mixed-model Poisson regression we observed a three-way interaction between condition (drawing, language), element type (object, wall) and target position (by object, by wall), β = 2.274, p < .001. The results showed that children were modulating their communications in language but not in drawings (see Figure 1). This suggests that depicting layout information used for navigation on a 2D piece of paper poses a particular challenge for children, a challenge not present in language.

Authors

• Agata Bochynska, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Moira R. Dillon, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author