Kids' Spatial Skills Improve When Parents Use Certain Words

babies playing at playground — Children who used more spacial terms, such as tall and wide, were more likely to have caregivers who used those terms more often as well.

(Image credit: Dreamstime)

When parents describe the size and shape of objects to their preschool children and the kids then use those words in their day-to-day interactions, the children later perform much better on spatial skills tests, a new study shows.

The study involved 52 children, ages 14 months to 46 months, along with one of each child's primary caregivers (mainly the mothers). During nine 90-minute sessions at four-month intervals, the researchers video-recorded the caregivers and children as they engaged in their normal, everyday activities.

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When the children were 4 1/2 years old, the team tested their spatial skills, including: the ability to rotate objects in their minds rather than just physically, copy block designs or match objects with similar sizes or shapes. In the spatial analogy, or matching, task, for example, the children were shown four pictures and asked to select which of the pictures best depicted the same spatial relation to a main target picture.

Children who had been exposed to more spatial terms during the recorded sessions and had learned to use those words themselves performed much better on spatial tests than children who did not hear and speak as many of these terms. Specifically, for every 45 additional spatial words the children heard and repeated during their "everyday activities," the researchers saw a 23 percent increase in their spatial test scores.

Remy Melina was a staff writer for Live Science from 2010 to 2012. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Communication from Hofstra University where she graduated with honors.