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Spatial Thinking in Term and Preterm-Born Preschoolers: Relations to Parent–Child Speech and Gesture
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 s...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8103033/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33967912 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.651678 |
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author | Clingan-Siverly, Sam Nelson, Paige M. Göksun, Tilbe Demir-Lira, Ö. Ece |
author_facet | Clingan-Siverly, Sam Nelson, Paige M. Göksun, Tilbe Demir-Lira, Ö. Ece |
author_sort | Clingan-Siverly, Sam |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8103033 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81030332021-05-08 Spatial Thinking in Term and Preterm-Born Preschoolers: Relations to Parent–Child Speech and Gesture Clingan-Siverly, Sam Nelson, Paige M. Göksun, Tilbe Demir-Lira, Ö. Ece Front Psychol Psychology 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-04-23 /pmc/articles/PMC8103033/ /pubmed/33967912 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.651678 Text en Copyright © 2021 Clingan-Siverly, Nelson, Göksun and Demir-Lira. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Clingan-Siverly, Sam Nelson, Paige M. Göksun, Tilbe Demir-Lira, Ö. Ece Spatial Thinking in Term and Preterm-Born Preschoolers: Relations to Parent–Child Speech and Gesture |
title | Spatial Thinking in Term and Preterm-Born Preschoolers: Relations to Parent–Child Speech and Gesture |
title_full | Spatial Thinking in Term and Preterm-Born Preschoolers: Relations to Parent–Child Speech and Gesture |
title_fullStr | Spatial Thinking in Term and Preterm-Born Preschoolers: Relations to Parent–Child Speech and Gesture |
title_full_unstemmed | Spatial Thinking in Term and Preterm-Born Preschoolers: Relations to Parent–Child Speech and Gesture |
title_short | Spatial Thinking in Term and Preterm-Born Preschoolers: Relations to Parent–Child Speech and Gesture |
title_sort | spatial thinking in term and preterm-born preschoolers: relations to parent–child speech and gesture |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8103033/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33967912 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.651678 |
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