Three-year-olds’ spatial language comprehension and links with mathematics and spatial performance.

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.

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Shifts of Attention During Spatial Language Comprehension - A Computational Investigation

Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence ◽

10.5220/0005851202130222 ◽

2016 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Thomas Kluth ◽

Michele Burigo ◽

Pia Knoeferle

Keyword(s):

Language Comprehension ◽

Spatial Language ◽

Computational Investigation

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The effects of direction and orientation of located objects on spatial language comprehension

Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/langcog.2018.3 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 298-328 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

MICHELE BURIGO ◽

HOLGER SCHULTHEIS

Keyword(s):

Language Comprehension ◽

Language Use ◽

Spatial Language ◽

Reference Object ◽

Geometric Features ◽

Spatial Description ◽

Language Understanding ◽

Geometric Properties ◽

Orientation Axis ◽

Reported Study

abstractSpatial descriptions such as “The spider isbehindthe bee” inform the listener about the location of the spider (the located object) in relation to an object whose location is known (i.e., the bee, also called the reference object). If the geometric properties of the reference object have been shown to affect how people use and understand spatial language (Carlson & Van Deman, 2008; Carlson-Radvansky & Irwin, 1994), the geometric features carried by the located object have been deemed irrelevant for spatial language (Landau, 1996; Talmy, 1983). This view on the (ir)relevance of the located object has been recently questioned by works showing that presenting the located object in misalignment with the reference object has consequences for spatial language understanding (Burigo, Coventry, Cangelosi, & Lynott, 2016; Burigo & Sacchi, 2013). In the reported study we aimed to investigate which geometric properties of the located object affect the apprehension of a spatial description, and to disentangle whether the information concerning its orientation (axis), direction (front/rear), or a combination of the two gives rise to conflict. The outcomes of three placing tasks suggest that only the information concerning the direction of the located object is critical for spatial language use.

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Spatial Language and Children’s Spatial Landmark Use

Child Development Research ◽

10.1155/2012/427364 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 2012 ◽

pp. 1-14 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Amber A. Ankowski ◽

Emily E. Thom ◽

Catherine M. Sandhofer ◽

Aaron P. Blaisdell

Keyword(s):

Language Comprehension ◽

Training Trial ◽

Search Task ◽

Search Behavior ◽

Spatial Language ◽

Search Performance ◽

Initial Training ◽

Spatial Search ◽

Probe Test ◽

Square Array

We examined how spatial language affected search behavior in a landmark spatial search task. In Experiment 1, two- to six-year-old children were trained to find a toy in the center of a square array of four identical landmarks. Children heard one of three spatial language cues once during the initial training trial (“here,” “in the middle,” “next to this one”). After search performance reached criterion, children received a probe test trial in which the landmark array was expanded. In Experiment 2, two- to four-year-old children participated in the search task and also completed a language comprehension task. Results revealed that children’s spatial language comprehension scores and spatial language cues heard during training trials were related to children’s performance in the search task.

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