"You did a great job building that!" Links between parent-child prosocial talk and spatial language.

We investigated the extent to which parents' prosocial talk and negations relate to the quantity and diversity of parents' spatial language production. We also examined similar associations among children. Participants included 51 children of ages 4-7 years and their parents recruited from South Florida. Most of the dyads included mothers and were Hispanic and bilingual. Dyads constructed a Lego house for 10 min. Sessions were transcribed and coded for instances of parent prosocial talk (praises, reflective statements, and behavior descriptions), child general positive statements (all positive contributions to the interaction), and parent and child negations (criticisms, corrections, and disapprovals) using the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System. Transcripts were also coded for quantity and diversity of spatial language including shape terms (e.g., square), dimensional adjectives (e.g., little), orientations (e.g., turn), locations (e.g., middle), and spatial features/properties (e.g., edge). Parents' prosocial language, but not negations, were significantly associated with the quantity and diversity of parents' spatial language. Children's general positive statements were significantly associated with children's spatial language quantity. Exploratory data analyses also revealed significant associations between parent-child talk about shapes, dimensions, and spatial features and properties. Findings suggest that variability in parent-child prosocial and spatial talk during collaborative spatial play relates to aspects of their own-and each other's-spatial language production. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Spatial anxiety mediates the sex difference in adult mental rotation test performance.

Mental rotation ability is associated with successful advances in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education and occupations. Meta-analyses have shown consistent sex disparities in mental rotation, where men outperform women on one measure of mental rotation ability, the Mental Rotations Test (MRT). Spatial anxiety, or the fear and apprehension felt when completing a task that requires spatial thinking, was proposed as a mechanism explaining the relation between sex and mental rotation test performance. This study modified the Spatial Anxiety Scale (SAS) to include questions about how anxious individuals feel when they must mentally rotate items to accomplish a task (e.g., playing Tetris). An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to assess the factorial structure of the modified spatial anxiety scale. Three factor loadings were extracted representing the ability to navigate, mentally rotate objects, and visualize objects. Furthermore, we analyzed the role of spatial anxiety and trait anxiety as potential mediators of the relation between participant sex and mental rotation performance. Spatial anxiety partially mediated the link between the sex of the participants and the MRT performance controlling for trait anxiety. Only navigation and mental rotation anxiety significantly mediated the relation between participant sex and mental rotation performance. We posit spatial anxiety as a barrier to efficient and accurate spatial thinking, and suggest that reducing spatial anxiety has the potential to improve spatial skills and reduce sex differences in mental rotation test performance. To ascertain this, an experimental design can determine whether a reduction in spatial anxiety causes changes in mental rotation test scores.

Sex Differences in Gains Among Hispanic Pre-kindergartners' Mental Rotation Skills.

The current study explores change in mental rotation skills throughout the pre-kindergarten year in a Hispanic population to better understand the development of early sex differences in mental rotation. Ninety-six Hispanic children (M = 4 years 8 months) completed a mental rotation task at the beginning and end of pre-kindergarten. Results suggest Hispanic boys and girls differed in gains on mental rotation ability, with boys improving significantly more than girls during pre-kindergarten on a mental rotation task. This study highlights the significance of studying mental rotation abilities in a Hispanic population of pre-kindergarten aged children and suggests the importance of examining sex differences in mental rotation over time, rather than at one time-point, to better understand when sex differences in spatial skills develop. We discuss various factors that potentially affect the growth of spatial skills including the role of early education, spatial experiences, and spatial language input.