Preschool children who hear parents use specific words describing the size and shape of different objects and then repeat them do much better on tests of spatial skills than those kids who don't hear such words.
The study is the first to show that learning to use words bearing on shape and size may improve children's later spatial skills, which are important in mathematics, science and technology.
For example, these are skills that physicists and engineers rely on to take an abstract idea, conceptualise it and turn it into a real-world process, action or device.
Researchers found that one to four-year-olds who heard and then spoke 45 additional spatial words that described sizes and shapes saw, on average, a 23 percent increase in their scores on a non-verbal assessment of spatial thinking, the journal Developmental Science reports.
"Our results suggest that children's talk about space early in development is a significant predictor of their later spatial thinking," said University of Chicago psychologist Susan Levine, who co-authored the study, according to a Chicago statement.
Her co-authors are Shannon Pruden, Florida International University and Janellen Huttenlocher, also of University of Chicago.
