Abstract
Spatial skills predict important life outcomes, such as mathematical achievement or entrance into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Children significantly vary in their spatial performance even before they enter formal schooling. One correlate of children's spatial performance is the spatial language they produce and hear from others, such as their parents. Because the emphasis has been on spatial language, less is known about the role of hand gestures in children's spatial development. Some children are more likely to fall behind in their spatial skills than others. Children born premature (gestational age <37 weeks) constitute such a risk group. Here, we compared performance of term and preterm-born children on two non-verbal spatial tasks—mental transformation and block design. We also examined relations of children's performance on these tasks to parental spatial language and gesture input and their own production of spatial language and gesture during an independent puzzle play interaction. We found that while term and preterm-born children (n = 40) as a group did not differ in the mental transformation or block design performance, children varied widely in their performance within each group. The variability in mental transformation scores was predicted by both a subset of spatial words (what aspects of spatial information) and all spatial gestures children produced. Children's spatial language and gesture were in turn related to their parents' spatial language and gesture. Parental spatial language and gesture had an indirect relation on children's mental transformation, but not block design, scores via children's spatial language, and gesture use. Overall, results highlight the unique contributions of speech and gesture in communicating spatial information and predicting children's spatial performance.
Highlights
Starting from early preschool years, children significantly vary in their performance on spatial tasks (e.g., Levine et al, 1999; Halpern et al, 2007)
Spatial words focusing on spatial features and properties of objects, i.e., what terms, were predictive of CMTT performance, over and above spatial gestures
We tested whether parental spatial words and gestures would relate to children’s CMMT and WPPSI Block Design scores
Summary
Starting from early preschool years, children significantly vary in their performance on spatial tasks (e.g., Levine et al, 1999; Halpern et al, 2007). Spatial Thinking in Preterm-Born Children (STEM) disciplines (e.g., Casey et al, 1997; Benbow et al, 2000; Shea et al, 2001; Wai et al, 2009). A strong predictor of the individual differences in term children’s spatial skills is the spatial language they produce. Little is known about the nature of the spatial language children born preterm produce and receive, and the role of parental input in preterm children’s spatial development. We compare non-verbal spatial skills of pretermand term-born children, examine differences in parent and child spatial speech and gesture between the two groups during a puzzle play activity, and identify the role of parent and child verbal and gestural input produced during puzzle play in predicting individual differences in children’s spatial skills in both groups
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