Poster #12 - The Everyday Spatial Behavior Questionnaire for Children

• In Event: Poster Session 02

Abstract

Introduction: People engage in spatial activities daily such as judging distance or size, or finding their car in the parking lot. Eliot & Czarnolewski (2007) developed the Everyday Spatial Behavioral Questionnaire (ESBQ) to measure these daily spatial behaviors. However, this questionnaire was directed towards adults. Children also engage in a wide variety of spatial activities on a daily basis. Therefore, the goal of this research is to develop and examine a developmental version of the ESBQ for Children, namely ESBQC. We categorized everyday spatial behaviors into four categories: Intrinsic-Static, Intrinsic-Dynamic, Extrinsic-Static, and Extrinsic-Dynamic, based on the theoretical framework by Newcombe & Shipley (2015). We also examined gender differences in the newly developed ESBQC and its associations with the Vineland Adaptive Behaviors Scales, SBSOD, and Raven’s Progressive Matrices.

General Method: This is part of a larger study. The sample consisted of 159 children (89 females and 70 males), with a mean age of 6.86 years old (SD = 1.85; range = 4.00 - 9.97). Due to Covid, 65 participants completed in-person and 94 completed the tasks online. Parents completed Vineland Adaptive Behaviors Scales, Third Edition (Vineland-3) and the ESBQC regarding their children’s everyday spatial behaviors. For ESBQC, parents were asked to rate the perceived difficulty of the behaviors based on the child’s prior experience on a scale of 1 (Always difficult) to 5 (Never difficult). Example questions are “Helping another person find their glasses or keys''(Intrinsic-Static),“Folding a piece of paper into equal halves'' (Intrinsic-Dynamic),
“Judging whether a pole is vertical”(Extrinsic-Static), or “Swatting a fly”(Extrinsic-Dynamic). In the ESBQC, there are a total of 67 items consisting of 14 items for Intrinsic-Static, 9 items for Intrinsic-Dynamic, 8 items for Extrinsic-Static, and 15 items for Extrinsic-Dynamic. Parents also completed the Santa Barbara Sense of direction (SBSOD) questionnaire (Hegarty et al., 2002) for their children. Children completed Raven’s Progressive Matrices in addition to other tasks.

General Results: The reliability was relatively high for the ESBQC: Cronbach’s alpha= 0.962. Repeated Measure ANOVA controlling for age and gender showed no differences between the four subscales of ESBQC. Independent sample t-tests showed no significant differences between females and males on each of the four subscales of the ESBQC. Finally, ESBQC showed a positive and significant correlation with SBSOD, the Vineland-3, and Raven’s, r = 0.523, p < .001, r = 0.672, p < .001, and r = 0.405, p < .001, respectively. Better ESBQC was associated with higher SBSOD, adaptive behaviors and nonverbal intelligence.

Discussion: Our modified ESBQC may be a promising tool to assess everyday spatial behaviors among children. We didn’t find differences between the four subscales based on the theoretical framework of Newcombe & Shipley (2015). It is possible that one single spatial behavior might involve more than one spatial ability. Considering the strong connections between spatial abilities and STEM success, we call for more research on daily spatial behaviors and activities in children.

Authors

• Sonia Conde, Montclair State University
  Presenting Author

• Arielle Hershkovich, Montclair State University

• Daria Lasc, Montclair State University

• Tori Buckman

• Nima Patel

• Rachelle Gorczynski

• Samantha Salernitano

• Yingying Yang, Montclair State University