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The frequency of home spatial activities (e.g., puzzles and blocks) correlates with young children's spatial skills, but causal evidence is limited. We addressed this issue by comparing the effects of a parent‐led intervention aimed at increasing spatial activities to an active control targeting narrative activities (preregistered:https://osf.io/u7qrx). Parents of 80 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children were randomly assigned to either a spatial or narrative condition. Parents learned about the importance and malleability of spatial or narrative skills and engaged their children in spatial or narrative activities provided by the researchers for a month. Unexpectedly, the spatial intervention did not significantly enhance children's spatial skills or parents' motivational beliefs regarding children's spatial abilities. These findings do not support the hypothesis that spatial play causally influences children's skills. However, we note that the families in our sample had high socioeconomic status, and their children may have already benefited from rich spatial environments.
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Natural Variability in Parent-Child Puzzle Play at Home
Here, we observed 3- to 4-year-old children ( N =31) and their parents playing with puzzles at home during a zoom session to provide insight into the variability of the kinds of puzzles children have in their home, and the variability in how children and their parents play with spatial toys. We observed a large amount of variability in both children and parents’ behaviors, and in the puzzles they selected. Further, we found relations between parents’ and children’s behaviors. For example, parents provided more scaffolding behaviors for younger children and parents’ persistence-focused language was related to more child attempts after failure. Altogether, the present work shows how using methods of observing children at a distance, we can gain insight into the environment in which they are developing. The results are discussed in terms of how variability in spatial toys and spatial play during naturalistic interactions can help us contextualize the conclusions we draw from lab-based studies.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1823489
- PAR ID:
- 10296211
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Volume:
- 12
- ISSN:
- 1664-1078
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733895
