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Spatial skills support STEM learning and achievement. However, children from low-socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds typically lag behind their middle- and high-SES peers. We asked whether a digital educational app--designed to mirror an already successful, spatial assembly training program using concrete materials--would be as effective for facilitating spatial skills in under-resourced preschoolers as the concrete materials. Three-year-olds (N = 61) from under-resourced backgrounds were randomly assigned to a business-as-usual control group or to receive 5 weeks of spatial training using either concrete, tangible materials or a digital app on a tablet. The spatial puzzles used were an extension of items from the Test of Spatial Assembly (TOSA). Preschoolers were pretested and posttested on new two-dimensional (2D) TOSA trials. Results indicate that both concrete and digital spatial training increased performance on the 2D-TOSA compared to the control group. The two trainings did not statistically differ from one another suggesting that educational spatial apps may be one route to providing early foundational skills to children from under-resourced backgrounds.

How do toddlers learn the names of geometric forms? Previous work suggests that preschoolers have fragmentary knowledge and that defining properties are not understood until well into elementary school. The current study investigated when children first begin to understand shape names and how they apply those labels to unusual instances. We tested 25- and 30-month-old children's (N = 30 each) understanding of names for canonical shapes (commonly encountered instances, e.g., equilateral triangles), noncanonical shapes (more irregular instances, e.g., scalene triangles), and embedded shapes (shapes within a larger picture, e.g., triangular slices of pizza). At 25 months, children knew very few names, including those for canonical shapes. By 30 months, however, children had acquired more shape names and were beginning to apply them to some of the less typical instances of the shapes. Possible mechanisms driving this initial development of shape knowledge and implications of that development for school readiness are explored. [This article was published in the "Journal of Cognition and Development" (EJ1090613).]

Early spatial skills predict the development of later spatial and mathematical skills. Yet, it is unclear how comprehension of the words that capture spatial relations, words like behind and under, might be associated with children's early spatial and mathematics skills. The current study addressed this question by conducting a moderated mediation model to test the potential moderating effects of group factors, such as socioeconomic status (SES) and gender, on the possible mediation of spatial language comprehension on the association between spatial skill and mathematics performance. In total, 192 3-year-olds were tested on a battery of assessments, including a novel Spatial Language Comprehension Task, a test of spatial skills (2- and 3-dimensional trials of the Test of Spatial Assembly [2D and 3D TOSA, respectively]), and a composite of 2 mathematical assessments. The results indicate that this novel Spatial Language Comprehension Task is a reliable measure useful for examining group differences and the early space--math link. Specifically, higher-SES preschoolers and females had higher spatial language comprehension compared with their lower-SES peers and males, respectively. These SES and gender disparities in spatial language comprehension are concerning, given the strong association between spatial language comprehension and mathematics skills. Additionally, spatial language comprehension mediated the association between spatial skill and mathematics performance for females only. Future work should examine the potential causal role that spatial language comprehension may have in concurrent and later spatial and mathematics skills.

Block-building skills at age 3 are related to spatial skills at age 5 and spatial skills in grade school are linked to later success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Though studies have focused on block-building behaviors and design complexity, few have examined these variables in relation to future spatial and mathematical skills or have considered how children go about copying the model in detail. This study coded 3-year-olds' (N = 102) block-building behaviors and structural complexity on 3-D trials of the "Test of Spatial Assembly" (TOSA). It explored whether individual differences in children's building behaviors and the complexity of their designs related to accuracy in copying the model block structures or their spatial and mathematical skills at ages 4 and 5. Our findings reveal that block-building behaviors were associated with concurrent and later spatial skills while structural complexity was associated with concurrent and later spatial skills as well as concurrent mathematics skills. Future work might teach children to engage in the apparently successful block-building strategies examined in this research to evaluate a potential causal mechanism.

Learning the names of geometric shapes is at the intersection of early spatial, mathematical, and language skills, all important for school-readiness and predictors of later abilities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We investigated whether socioeconomic status (SES) influenced children's processing of shape names and whether differences in processing were predictive of later spatial skills. Three-year-olds (N = 79) with mothers of varying education levels participated in an eye-tracking task that required them to look at named shapes. Lower SES children took longer to fixate target shapes and spent less time looking at them than higher SES children. Gaze variables measured at age 3 were predictive of spatial skills measured at age 5 even though the spatial measures did not require shape-related vocabulary. Early efficiency in the processing of shape names may contribute to the development of a foundation for spatial learning in the preschool years.

How do toddlers learn the names of geometric forms? Previous work suggests that preschoolers have fragmentary knowledge and that defining properties are not understood until well into elementary school. The current study investigated when children first begin to understand shape names and how they apply those labels to unusual instances. We tested 25- and 30-month-old children's (N = 30 each) understanding of names for "canonical" shapes (commonly encountered instances, e.g., equilateral triangles), "noncanonical" shapes (more irregular instances, e.g., scalene triangles), and "embedded" shapes (shapes within a larger picture, e.g., triangular slices of pizza). At 25 months, children knew very few names, including those for canonical shapes. By 30 months, however, children had acquired more shape names and were beginning to apply them to some of the less typical instances of the shapes. Possible mechanisms driving this initial development of shape knowledge and implications of that development for school readiness are explored.

As the traditional toys of the past are quickly being replaced with electronically "enhanced" toys, it is important to understand how these changes impact parent--child interactions, especially in light of the evidence that the richness and variety of these interactions have long-term effects on diverse areas of cognition (Hart & Risley, 1995). Here, we compared the quantity and quality of the language children hear during play with either a "traditional" (nonelectronic) or an "electronic" shape sorter designed to teach children about geometric shapes. Spatial toys and spatial language, in particular, were explored since recent work has established that parents' use of spatial language links to children's short- and long-term performance on spatial tasks (Pruden, Levine, & Huttenlocher, 2011), and that spatial skills are relevant to success in learning mathematics and science (Newcombe, 2010). Traditional toys prompted more parental spatial language and more varied overall language than did electronic toys.

This study focuses on three main goals: First, 3-year-olds' spatial assembly skills are probed using interlocking block constructions (N = 102). A detailed scoring scheme provides insight into early spatial processing and offers information beyond a basic accuracy score. Second, the relation of spatial assembly to early mathematical skills was evaluated. Spatial skill independently predicted a significant amount of the variability in concurrent mathematical performance. Finally, the relation between spatial assembly skill and socioeconomic status (SES), gender, and parent-reported spatial language was examined. While children's performance did not differ by gender, lower SES children were already lagging behind higher SES children in block assembly. Furthermore, lower SES parents reported using significantly fewer spatial words with their children.

Some individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome exhibit strengths in solving jigsaw puzzles. We compared visuospatial ability and jigsaw puzzle performance and strategies of 26 persons with Prader-Willi syndrome and 26 MA-matched typically developing controls. Individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome relied on piece shape. Those in the control group used a different, picture-focused strategy. Individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome performed better than did the control group on an achromatic interlocking puzzle, whereas scores on puzzles with pictures (interlocking or noninterlocking) did not differ. Visuospatial scores related to performance on all puzzles in the control group and on the noninterlocking puzzle in the Prader-Willi syndrome group. The most proficient jigsaw puzzlers with Prader-Willi syndrome tended to be older and have shape-based strategies.