Learning to Talk About Spatial Relationships
The ball is on the table; the toy is in the box; the shoe is on the foot. In order to talk about spatial relationships like these, children first need to acquire spatial language.
鈥淏etween 12 months and 5 years is an active time for infants鈥 and children鈥檚 spatial language development,鈥 says Psychology Professor Laura Lakusta. 鈥淩esearch suggests that by 10 weeks, infants have an understanding of spatial configurations. Further, children understand and produce spatial terms before age 2. Spatial language continues to develop into early childhood.鈥
Lakusta鈥檚 project, 鈥淚nteractions Between Language and Cognition in the Early Acquisition of Spatial Language,鈥 was recently awarded a three-year, $500,000 National Science Foundation Research in Undergraduate Institutions, or RUI, grant.
Lakusta hopes her project will shed new light on the critical development of early spatial language skills. 鈥淲e know that language development of spatial terms is relevant for later academic achievement, particularly in STEM-related disciplines, but our understanding is far from complete,鈥 explains Lakusta.
Principal Investigator Lakusta and colleague Barbara Landau from Johns Hopkins University, will test 340 infants and children between the ages of 6 months and 4 1/2 years, their parents and 16 college students. One study will test whether children think that a toy placed on top or on the side of a box are both instances of 鈥渟upport鈥 and can be described with the term 鈥渙n.鈥
鈥淯nderstanding of spatial prepositions, like 鈥榦n,鈥 is pertinent to children鈥檚 understanding of STEM disciplines like math,鈥 Lakusta says.
Other experiments look at how parents talk about support to their children and explore the connection between parental input and child language development.
Lakusta鈥檚 project will also allow students to gain research experience in participant testing, data interpretation, publishing and presenting findings.