Parental use of spatial language and gestures in early childhood

Abstract

Parents' use of spatial language and gestures is closely linked to children's spatial language development. Little is known about the quantity and quality of early spatial input and how infants' individual characteristics may be related to the spatial input they receive. Here, we examine (1) the amount and type of spatial input 16- to 21-month-old Turkish-learning children (n = 34) received in the context of a spatial activity (puzzle play) and (2) whether parental spatial input in the form of speech and gesture varies based on children's age, sex, and early spatial vocabulary comprehension assessed in an earlier session. Results of the regression analyses showed that parents' use of spatial words was predicted by children's age over and beyond earlier spatial word comprehension and sex. In particular, parents used more spatial speech as their children got older even in this restricted age range. Children's early spatial word comprehension also correlated with parents' spatial word production. Yet, parents' overall gesture use and gestures with spatial words were not predicted by children's age, sex, or early spatial word comprehension. These findings suggest that in the spatial domain, early verbal input, but not gestural input, can change depending on children's age and children's spatial vocabulary comprehension may also be related to parental use of later spatial language. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Parents enhance their children's spatial skills using spatial language and gestures. Parental spatial talk is related to children's later spatial skills. What does this study add? We assess both spatial talk and gesture in early childhood. We examine the children's characteristics (age, sex) in relation to spatial talk and gesture. We present how children's earlier vocabulary competence relates to parental input.

Jestlerin Çocukların Dil-İletişim ve Bilişsel Becerilerinin Gelişimindeki Destekleyici Rolü

“…Örneğin, aktif jest kullanan ve bu jestlerini sözel olarak ifade eden bir ebeveyn ile daha az jest kullanan ve kullanmış olduğu jestleri sözel olarak ifade etmeyen bir ebeveynin çocukların jest kullanımlarına farklı şekillerde katkı sağlayabileceği düşünülebilir. Tıpkı ebeveynin jest ve sözel ifadelerinin çocukların jest kullanımına etkisi olabileceği gibi çocukların daha önceki yıllarda kullanmış olduğu kelimeler de uzamsal dil kullanımı gibi belli alanlarda, ebeveynlerin şu anki kelime kullanımını etkileyebilir (Kısa, Aktan-Erciyes, Turan ve Göksun, 2019). Fakat ebeveynlerin bu süreçte oynadığı rolü ve çocuklarda bireysel farklılıklara olası etkisini anlamak için daha fazla çalışmaya ihtiyaç duyulmaktadır.…”

Fine motor abilities and parental input of spatial features predict object word comprehension of Turkish‐learning children

“…At Time 2, we presented a wooden puzzle toy to parents and children to freely play for 3 min (see Kısa et al, 2019 for detailed information). The experimenter demonstrated how to play with the puzzle by fitting pieces into the wooden puzzle board, but no specific instructions were given.…”

“…During exploration, parents do not only utter object names but also supervise children's learning with other tools such as informative language or responsive behaviours (Tamis‐LeMonda et al, 2013). Parents also tune their spatial input based on their children's knowledge of spatial words (Kısa, Aktan‐Erciyes, Turan, & Göksun, 2019). Therefore, parental spatial input referring to object features can be related to object naming via tailoring visual and manual exploration for the shape‐based object categories.…”

Spatial Thinking in Term and Preterm-Born Preschoolers: Relations to Parent–Child Speech and Gesture

“…Some of the variability is due to children's characteristics, such as age, child language skills, and gender. In a recent study, Kisa et al reported that parental spatial language might vary as a function of age during toddlerhood and children's own spatial language comprehension assessed at an earlier age (Kisa et al, 2019). To sum, although gesture is tightly linked to spatial thinking, little is known about the role of parental spatial gestures in TB or PTB children's spatial development.…”

“…Spatial words parents and children produced were also coded using an adapted version of the System for Analyzing Children's Language about Space (Cannon et al, 2007)-a manual for identifying and categorizing spatial words and phrases in English. Coding was modified based on prior work (Pruden et al, 2011;Kisa et al, 2019) examining the spatial language use in parents and children. We used six categories: (1) dimensional adjectives that describe the size of a person, place or thing (e.g., big, tall, little), (2) spatial feature terms that describe properties of nondimensional aspects of objects (e.g., bumpy, corner, flat), (3) positional and directional terms that describe the relative position of a person or thing in space (e.g., around, top, between), ( 4) shape terms that are used to label any 2D or 3D enclosed spaces (e.g., circle, sphere), ( 5) orientation and transformation terms that describe the relative orientation or transformation of objects in space (e.g., turn, rotate), and ( 6) continuous amount terms that describe the amount of continuous quantities (e.g., whole, half, part).…”