Examining the role of external language support and children’s own language use in spatial development

• Authors: Hilary E Miller-Goldwater, Emory University; Vanessa R Simmering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Journal Title: JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
• Volume: Volume 215
• Publisher: Elsevier | 2022-03-01
• Type of Work: Article | Post-print: After Peer Review
• Publisher DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105317
• Subjects: Health Sciences, Medicine and Surgery
• Keywords: spatial cognition; language production; reference frame selection; spatial words; child development

Abstract

This research investigated whether an experimental manipulation providing children with external language support reflects developmental processes whereby children come to use language within spatial tasks. One hundred and twenty-one 3- to 6-year-old children participated in language production and spatial recall tasks. The Production task measured children’s task-relevant descriptions of spatial relations on the testing array. The Recall task assessed children’s delayed search for hidden object locations on the testing array relative to one or more spatial reference frames (egocentric, room-centered, and intrinsic). During the Recall task, the experimenter provided children with either descriptive or non-descriptive verbal cues. Results showed that children’s task-relevant language production improved with age and the effects of language support on spatial performance decreased with age. However, children’s production of task-relevant language did not account for effects of language support. Instead, children benefited from language support, irrespective of their task-relevant language production. These results suggest that verbal encoding is not a spontaneous process that young children use in support of their spatial performance. Additionally, experimental manipulations of language support are not fully reflective of the ways in which children come to use language within spatial tasks.