MIND, BRAIN, AND EDUCATION
Early Education for Spatial
Intelligence: Why, What,
and How
Nora S. Newcombe1 and Andrea Frick1
ABSTRACT—Spatial representation and thinking have
evolutionary importance for any mobile organism. In addition,
they help reasoning in domains that are not obviously spatial,
for example, through the use of graphs and diagrams. This
article reviews the literature suggesting that mental spatial
transformation abilities, while present in some precursory
form in infants, toddlers, and preschool children, also undergo
considerable development and show important individual
differences, which are malleable. These findings provide the
basis for thinking about how to promote spatial thinking
in preschools, at home, and in children’s play. Integrating
spatial content into formal and informal instruction could
not only improve spatial functioning in general but also
reduce differences related to gender and socioeconomic status
that may impede full participation in a technological society.
Spatial thinking is often difficult. People frequently get lost
or give directions that are difficult to follow or that contain
mistakes. They get frustrated when attempting to put together
‘‘easy to assemble’’ furniture, and they yell at each other when
trying to pack a small car for a long trip. However, such
problems may seem like minor hassles when viewed against
really important issues, such as illiteracy or failures to graduate
high school. The attention of psychologists, educational
researchers, and teachers is frequently focused on the basic
skills of reading and writing, mathematics, and science. Should
some of this energy also be devoted to improving spatial
thinking? There are several crucial reasons why.
First, remember that spatial intelligence has evolutionary
and adaptive importance. Any mobile organism must be able
1 Department
of Psychology, Temple University
Address correspondence to Nora S. Newcombe, Department of
Psychology, Weiss Hall, 1701 North 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA 191226085; e-mail:
[email protected].
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to navigate in its world to survive and must represent the
spatial environment in order to do so. Moving further along
the evolutionary timeline, the human ability to make tools
is one of the hallmarks of our species. In order to create a
successful tool, one must first imagine a shape that is relevant
to a particular function, such as cutting or digging, and then
fashion that shape out of larger forms.
Second, in line with this analysis of evolutionary demands,
over a century of research in the psychology of intelligence and
cognitive processes has established that spatial thinking is the
principal complement to verbal thinking. Several examples
drawn from multiple research traditions illustrate this point.
Factor analytic research has shown that visualization is a
well-defined component skill within general intelligence in
adults (Carroll, 1993). Developmental testing shows a spatial/numeracy factor in preschool children (Bornstein, 2009)
as well as in chimpanzees (Herrmann, Hernández-Lloreda,
Call, Hare, & Tomasello, 2010). Spatial intelligence was one
of the types of intelligence proposed in multiple-intelligence
theory (Gardner, 1983). Approaches to working memory have
distinguished between verbal working memory and the visuospatial sketchpad (Baddeley, 1986). Of course, controversy
exists over some of these matters: for example, see McGrew
(2009) on the psychometric approach to the structure of
intellect, Waterhouse (2006) for a critique of multiple intelligences, and Kane et al. (2004) for evidence that ___domain
specificity may not characterize working memory. Nevertheless, although the architecture of the human mind/brain has
yet to be defined definitively, spatial functioning will likely be
a relevant element in the solution.
Third, spatial thinking helps reasoning in domains that are
not, on the surface, obviously spatial. For example, spatial
metaphors and diagrams can be used to understand ordered
relations (e.g., the ranking of Gross National Product among
developing countries) or complex hierarchical relations (e.g.,
social relationships and biological taxonomies). Venn diagrams are used to solve logical problems. Maps do more than
just show us where to go; they become tools for thinking in their
2010 the Authors
Journal Compilation 2010 International Mind, Brain, and Education Society and Blackwell Publishing, Inc.
Volume 4—Number 3
Nora S. Newcombe and Andrea Frick
capacity to display to us the distribution of variables such as
population density or natural and economic resources. In fact,
one of the most famous stories in epidemiology concerns a map
prepared by a London physician, John Snow, during a cholera
epidemic. At the time, the way in which cholera spread was
unknown. Snow’s map plotted the ___location of water pumps
and the ___location of cholera cases and revealed how cases
clustered around one particular contaminated pump.
Fourth, a critically important application of spatial thinking
is to the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) disciplines. For example, Watson and Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA occurred when they were able to fit
a three-dimensional model to Rosalind Franklin’s flat images
of the molecule—clearly a spatial task. Similarly, a geoscientist
visualizes the processes that affect the formation of the earth,
an engineer anticipates how various forces may affect the
design of a structure, and a neurosurgeon visualizes particular
brain areas from magnetic resonance imaging that may determine the outcome of a surgical procedure. Progress and performance in various STEM fields thus seem to be strongly tied to
improving people’s ability to reason about spatial configurations and their properties. There is real evidence to back up this
proposition. Children and adolescents who have higher spatial
skills in middle and high school are more likely to major in the
STEM disciplines in college and to pursue STEM careers (Shea,
Lubinski, & Benbow, 2001; Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009).1
EVIDENCE OF MALLEABILITY
If spatial intelligence is theoretically and practically important,
the immediate question is whether it can be improved—can
children be educated in a way that would maximize their
potential in this ___domain? There is, happily, mounting evidence
that spatial thinking can be developed a great deal. It turns
out that even people who are considered spatially proficient
are not nearly as proficient as they could be and that people
who consider themselves spatially lacking can attain higher
levels of performance.
Most prior attempts to improve spatial skills via training
have focused on transformation processes, such as the rotation
and scaling of objects, rotation and scaling of arrays, and computation of the effects of viewer movement. A good deal of this
research has involved mental rotation, not only because it is an
important process but also because there are detailed accounts
of the relevant cognitive processes, some excellent tests of the
ability, and intriguing (if dismaying) reports of gender differences (see Newcombe, 2002, for an overview). Results of
individual training attempts have varied. Some researchers
have claimed that practice leads people to make fundamental
changes in how they process spatial stimuli, leading to transfer
to novel stimuli and new tasks (Bethell-Fox & Shepard, 1988).
Specifically, there are findings that improvement in spatial
Volume 4—Number 3
processing can generalize to novel stimuli within the same
task (Leone, Taine, & Droulez, 1993), to other tasks of the
same general type (e.g., mental rotation; De Lisi & Cammarano,
1996), and to tasks that share underlying cognitive processes
with the practiced task (Wallace & Hofelich, 1992). However,
others have reported that improvements in one spatial task do
not transfer to other spatial tasks (Heil, Rösler, Link, & Bajric,
1998; Stericker & LeVesconte, 1982). In fact, practice has often
been studied in paradigms using the same stimuli multiple
times (Kail, 1986), thus leaving open the possibility that any
gains are confined to a very narrow range of items. A panel
convened by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that
transfer of spatial improvements has not been convincingly
demonstrated and called for research aimed at determining
how to improve spatial performance in a generalizable way
(National Research Council, 2006).
When viewed in the aggregate, however, the body of
literature on spatial training is actually quite encouraging.
Baenninger and Newcombe (1989) conducted a meta-analysis
of studies of spatial training done up through the 1980s. They
found very clear improvements in spatial ability that were, as
one would expect, more striking as training was longer and
more thorough. Research subsequent to the meta-analysis has
supported these conclusions. For example, it has been shown
that time periods with greater amounts of school input (winter
months) are associated with greater cognitive growth in the
area of spatial operations in elementary school children than
time periods with less school input (summer months) (Huttenlocher, Levine, & Vevea, 1998). Thus, it is likely that various
educational techniques are benefiting children in the development of their spatial abilities. Additionally encouraging is
the finding of a recent meta-analysis (Uttal, Hand, Meadow,
& Newcombe, 2010) which includes studies completed since
the Baenninger and Newcombe review. Again it was shown
that there are substantial improvements in spatial skill from a
wide variety of interventions, including academic coursework,
task-specific practice, and playing computer games.
To illustrate this literature, let us consider two studies
(Terlecki, Newcombe, & Little, 2008; Wright, Thompson,
Ganis, Newcombe, & Kosslyn, 2008) that gave undergraduates extended practice or training on mental rotation, for a
period more prolonged than many other studies. The studies
found that the training effects observed after practice lasted
for the following several months and generalized to other
spatial tasks (something that has rarely been observed). These
effects were also massive—far larger in fact than the size of the
typical sex difference. Terlecki et al. (2008) investigated longterm effects of mental rotation training and addressed whether
these training effects are durable, transferable, larger for those
who trained with videogames as opposed to simple practice,
different for men and women, or different for individuals of
higher and lower initial ability. Undergraduates participated in
semester-long weekly practice with the Mental Rotations Test
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Early Education for Spatial Intelligence
(MRT) or, additionally, played the video-game Tetris. Structural equation modeling showed large improvements in mental
rotation with both test practice and video-game training;
these gains were maintained several months later. Video-game
training led to greater initial growth than practice alone, but
final performance did not reliably differ. However, video-game
training transferred to two other spatial tasks at levels exceeding the effects of practice; this transfer advantage was still
evident after several months. MRT scores of men and women
did not converge, but men showed faster initial growth and
women showed more improvement after the first few weeks—
especially women with lower levels of spatial experience.
In a second training study, Wright et al. (2008) investigated whether intensive long-term practice leads to change
that transcends stimuli and task parameters. College students
were tested on three cognitive tasks: a computerized version of
the Shepard-Metzler (Shepard & Metzler, 1971) MRT, a mental paper-folding task (MPFT), and a verbal analogies task.
Each individual then participated in daily practice sessions
with either the MRT or the MPFT over 21 days. Postpractice
comparisons revealed transfer of practice gains to novel stimuli
for the practiced task as well as transfer to the other, nonpracticed, spatial task. The transfer was symmetric: as great from
MRT to MPFT and vice versa. These findings indicate that
practice improves performance on spatial tasks, beyond simply training for shortcuts that allow successful manipulation
of specific stimuli. Improvement in the nonpracticed spatial
task was greater than in the verbal analogies test, and thus
improvement was not merely because of greater ease with
computerized testing.
Overall, it is clear that spatial training works, in a way that
generalizes to new stimuli and novel tasks, and is durable over
time. For participants of low ability, it appears that there is an
initial hump to get over, but if they persevere through a period
of slow improvement, faster improvement eventually occurs.
These conclusions are not the end of the story, however. There
is more to find out in future research. For example, how wide
is transfer? Is improved spatial skill causally related to better
STEM performance, and if so which specific skills translate
to better performance in which subject areas? What are the
neural correlates of better scores, and would such data give us
new ideas about more targeted training methods?
Of course, these studies involved adults. What about early
spatial development? A focus on spatial skills should likely
begin in the first 5 years of life, given evidence that early education generally pays the biggest dividends for later achievement
(Heckman, 2006). What is the nature of early spatial processing, and how can caregivers and educators best interact with
children to support their acquisition and development of these
skills? Examining what is known about the early development
can provide a good basis for answering this question. Two
particularly important and well-studied skills are the ability
to imagine transformations of the orientation of objects (e.g.,
104
mental rotations) and the ability to imagine the consequence of
observer movements around arrays of objects (i.e., perspective
taking). Mental rotation is the skill for which the strongest
evidence exists currently for positing relations with STEM
learning, and both mental rotation and perspective taking
have been extensively studied from a variety of approaches,
including research that has adopted developmental, cognitive,
psychometric, and neuroscientific methods. There are interesting similarities and differences between mental rotation
and perspective taking, illustrating the necessity of careful
analysis of spatial skills in order to gain a deep understanding
of spatial development.
MENTAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN INFANTS
AND PRESCHOOLERS
There are two basic kinds of spatial transformations. On the
one hand, one can mentally transform objects: for example,
imagine objects changing their orientation when they rotate,
changing scale by expansion or shrinkage, being cut in half or
folded, and so on. On the other hand, one can imagine oneself,
as the observer, taking new perspectives and moving with
respect to objects and arrays of objects. Research on mental
rotation (imagined object movements) and perspective taking (imagined observer movements) goes back to Piaget and
Inhelder (1956, 1971). They proposed that initially only egocentric and static representations are available. According to
them, it is not until 7–10 years of age, during the concrete
operational stage, that children start to differentiate viewpoints and become able to represent movements of objects in
space, manipulate mental images, and anticipate the outcome
of events. However, subsequent studies on the early emergence
and development of these abilities show that they can emerge
earlier than Piaget and Inhelder claimed and also demonstrate
considerable development across the preschool years. These
descriptive facts are important for well-informed intervention.
Development of Mental Rotation
Studies using looking-time paradigms with infants as young as
4 months have shown evidence for precursors of mental rotation (Hespos & Rochat, 1997; Rochat & Hespos, 1996). These
paradigms have even detected early sex differences, with male
infants showing more evidence of mental rotation than female
infants (Moore & Johnson, 2008; Quinn & Liben, 2008).
However, despite these interesting findings, data on very early
mental rotation need to be interpreted with caution. Research
paradigms used with infants differ from those used with older
children and adults in several ways and do not necessarily
measure the same ability. For instance, infants in many of the
looking-time studies had the opportunity to watch a substantial proportion of the movement in the familiarization phase,
whereas mental rotation paradigms used with older children
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Nora S. Newcombe and Andrea Frick
and adults (Cooper & Shepard, 1973; Shepard & Metzler, 1971)
typically present static stimuli. Thus, the infants did not have
to mentally initiate the transformation, but merely to continue
and extrapolate an ongoing or recently presented movement.
Mental continuation of movement may be easier than starting
a mental transformation from a static state. In fact, Frick
and Wang (2010) showed that, although infants of 16 months
looked longer at improbable outcomes of object rotations, even
when they had to initiate the mental rotation, this pattern did
not appear in 14-month-old infants, quite a lot older than the
infants who have been argued to be showing mental rotation in
the studies mentioned above. However, Frick and Wang also
found that 14-month-olds who had less than 2 min of handson training with a turntable looked longer at the improbable
outcome. This suggests that active motor experience increases
infants’ ability to predict the outcome of transformations.
The Frick and Wang (2010) experiments might be taken
to indicate a substantial ability to mentally rotate objects in
14-month-olds, even though some prior experience might be
necessary to activate this ability. However, there are other reasons to think that mental rotation is far from fully developed
even in later infancy. Örnkloo and von Hofsten (2007) found
that it was not until 22 months that infants could mentally
rotate objects in order to successfully fit them through holes,
and a recent study has also shown that there is considerable
developmental progress in this ability from 15 to 30 months
(Shutts, Örnkloo, von Hofsten, Keen, & Spelke, 2009).
Research on mental rotation abilities has also revealed
important individual differences in 3.5- to 5.5-year-olds (Frick
& Newcombe, 2009). Some children in this age range perform
above chance on a mental rotation task using a touch screen
paradigm. On the other hand, some children perform chance
at level and show flat response time curves, suggesting that
they do not mentally rotate the stimuli. These results challenge
Marmor’s (1975, 1977) results, which she interpreted to suggest that, at the age of 4–5 years, children are able to perform
mental rotations. Even though widely accepted at the time,
there has always been some controversy about this conclusion
(reviewed by Newcombe, 2002). Other studies have failed to
replicate Marmor’s results (Dean & Harvey, 1979), and, in line
with our results, analyses of individual children’s response
time patterns (Estes, 1998) suggested that only a small proportion of 4-year-olds appeared to apply a mental rotation
strategy. Marmor (1977) also found that training children to
use a mental rotation strategy did not have a significant effect,
from which she concluded that 4- and 5-year-olds can spontaneously use and evoke mental rotations. However, a later
replication study showed that, with training, twice as many
5-year-olds produced linear reaction time patterns that are
indicative of a mental rotation strategy (Platt & Cohen, 1981).
Furthermore, mental rotation has been shown to continuously strengthen through early childhood (Estes, 1998; Levine,
Huttenlocher, Taylor, & Langrock, 1999; Okamoto-Barth &
Volume 4—Number 3
Call, 2008). Several recent studies with children in kindergarten through elementary school suggest that motor activity
and what has been called ‘‘embodied thinking’’ may play an
influential role especially in young children’s mental transformation abilities. These studies showed similar developmental
trends in the degree to which mental rotation was impaired
by concurrent incompatible manual rotations (Frick, Daum,
Walser, & Mast, 2009) and hand postures (Funk, Brugger, &
Wilkening, 2005), or in how mental spatial transformations
were facilitated by concurrent compatible hand movements
(Frick, Daum, Wilson, & Wilkening, 2009).
Development of Perspective Taking
There are several kinds of perspective taking, known to be
graded in difficulty (for overviews of this literature, see Newcombe, 1988; Newcombe & Huttenlocher, 2000). The easiest
kind of perspective taking involves predicting what will
be seen after an actual physical movement. This prediction
requires spatial memory and transformation when the target
object or array is hidden, but the physical movement also transforms relations in regards to the frame of reference, making the
task easier. The task is more difficult when the observer does
not physically move but must imagine hypothetical movement
(Huttenlocher & Presson, 1973).
In infant studies, there is usually actual movement around an
array, which makes perspective taking easier. Roughly at an age
when infants are becoming more mobile and are able to move
around on their own, they begin to develop some perspectivetaking ability when they move. For instance, a study with
8-month-olds (Bai & Bertenthal, 1992) showed that infants’
locomotor status predicted their ability to keep track of the
___location of an object when they changed their position. In this
study, a toy was hidden in one of two identical wells on a table
and the infants searched for the toy after being moved to the
opposite side of the table. Creeping infants (infants who were
able to move on hands and knees without their bellies touching
the floor) predominantly searched in the correct well, whereas
crawling (with bellies touching the floor) and precrawling
infants showed below-chance searches. Furthermore, two
experimental studies indicate that infants are better at keeping
track of a hidden object if they themselves actively move to a
new position. In one study (Acredolo, Adams, & Goodwyn,
1984), infants were trained at 12 and 18 months to find an object
hidden in one of two identical wells in a Plexiglas box. When
allowed to search for the toy from the opposite side of the box,
correct searches predominated at 18 months. A similar study
(Benson & Uzgiris, 1985) showed that even 10- to 11-monthold infants predominantly searched in the correct well, if they
actively crawled to the new vantage point, as opposed to being
passively carried there by a parent. Newcombe, Huttenlocher,
Drummey, and Wiley (1998) asked children ages 16–36 months
to search for objects hidden in a rectangular sandbox, after
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Early Education for Spatial Intelligence
they had walked to the opposite side of the box. In this study,
children moved in a curtained environment and had to search
for the object in a homogenous space, as opposed to the studies
above that used two distinct hiding places. Hence children
needed to rely primarily on dead reckoning. Nevertheless,
children across this age range performed above chance.
Whereas in the studies described above the observers actually moved to a new ___location, other research has directly
investigated imagined observer transformations in young children. Rieser, Garing, and Young (1994) tested whether children
were able to imagine a distant spatial layout and then imagine
a change in perspective. Children sat at home and were asked
to imagine how their classroom would look like, first from
their own seat, and then from their teacher’s seat, and to point
to different locations in their classroom. Children at 3.5 years
and older were accurate and rapid in their pointing, but only
if they were instructed to imagine walking from their seat to
the teacher’s seat while actually walking a similar path and
turning consistently with the to-be-imagined heading.
Even though the above studies reveal surprising abilities at
very young ages, the tasks are quite different from the classic
Piagetian perspective-taking tasks (e.g., Three Mountains
Task: Piaget & Inhelder, 1948/1956), in which children had
to choose which of several pictures would show what they
would see if they moved around an array. In Rieser et al.’s task,
there is minimal competing sensory input because perspectives
were imagined in a dark room. In Piaget and Inhelder’s picture
selection task, there is a competition between the perceptually
present surround and the one that must be imagined. There
are other ways than turning out the lights to reduce this
competition. Newcombe and Huttenlocher (1992) asked
preschoolers to imagine how a layout located immediately
in front of them would look from different viewpoints, using
a verbal question that highlighted a particular spatial relation
(What object would be closest to you?). Their results showed
that 3- to 5-year-olds were able to indicate the ___location of
objects relative to another viewpoint, although the 3-yearolds often responded egocentrically, that is, relative to their
own current perspective. However, children of this age were
completely unable to cope with Piaget and Inhelder’s original
task: selecting which of four pictures would show the array
from the imagined perspective. In a study with older children
that provided the basis for the later study of preschoolers,
Huttenlocher and Presson (1973) found that even third- and
fifth- graders still made numerous egocentric errors in classic
perspective-taking tasks using arrays of pictures, although
they performed much better in response to verbal questions
that focused on particular spatial relations than with the
picture-selection task. Thus, it appears that the real challenge
in perspective-taking tasks during the school years is not the
mental transformation that underlies the ability to imagine
someone else’s perspective per se, but ignoring one’s own
perspective and perceptual surroundings.
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Mental Rotation Versus Perspective Taking
Huttenlocher and Presson (1973, 1979) showed that performance in observer rotation (or perspective-taking) tasks
differed considerably from performance in array rotation (or
mental rotation) tasks and that the degree of difficulty in
the two tasks was not influenced by the same factors. These
results have been corroborated by further behavioral studies
that showed performance differences between observer rotation and array or object rotation tasks in adults. For instance,
different response time functions have been found in object
rotation tasks and observer rotation tasks. Object rotations
typically show a linear increase in response time as a function
of angle of rotation; that is, larger rotations typically take
longer (Cooper & Shepard, 1973; Shepard & Metzler, 1971).
On the other hand, when participants are instead asked to
imagine themselves rotating, this linear increase in reaction
times has not always been found (Jola & Mast, 2005; Wraga,
Creem, & Proffitt, 2000; Zacks, Mires, Tversky, & Hazeltine,
2000). In a factor analytic study, Hegarty and Waller (2004)
compared several measures of mental rotation and perspectivetaking abilities and concluded that measures of perspective
taking and mental rotation are dissociable, while correlated,
in adults. They argued that these two types of spatial transformations rely on different cognitive operations, although they
may also share some common processes, such as generating
and maintaining mental representations (Kosslyn, 1994).
This research raises the question of whether imagined
observer rotations and object rotations recruit the same brain
areas. Evidence from neurophysiological studies in adults
suggests that tasks that require object-based spatial transformations and those that require viewpoint changes depend on
different neural processes (Creem et al., 2001; Kosslyn, Digirolamo, Thompson, & Alpert, 1998; Zacks, Rypma, Gabrieli,
Tversky, & Glover, 1999). For instance, lesions to right posterior cortex were associated with selective impairments at
object rotation tasks, whereas lesions to left posterior cortex
were associated with selective impairments in the ability to
navigate and to imagine oneself turning, as in following a route
on a map (for a review see Zacks et al., 1999).
Summary
Mental rotation and perspective-taking skills are present in
some precursory form in toddlers and preschool children,
but they undergo considerable development during this time
and into middle childhood, and they also show important
individual differences. Furthermore, despite their superficial
resemblance, mental rotation and perspective taking seem to
be dissociable abilities that are affected by different performance factors and involve different neural processes. However,
the two abilities have in common that their developmental
progress is closely linked to motor development, and motor
activity has been found to facilitate performance in both kinds
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Nora S. Newcombe and Andrea Frick
of tasks. Presumably, children’s mental spatial transformation
abilities can profit from active movement, by allowing them to
tap into well-established and fine-tuned links between action
and cognition that are primarily used for keeping track of the
environment during movement and for tracking objects during
manipulation of them.
IMPLICATIONS
These are ideal circumstances for intervention. First, infant
studies suggest that a basis for development is established
early, in the form of rudimentary types of spatial transformation skills. Second, research suggests that spatial transformation skills continue to develop through early childhood,
so interventions across a wide range of ages may still have a
significant impact on children’s cognitive development. Third,
because individual differences in spatial thinking are malleable, chances are good that spatial thinking may be fostered
by effective technology and education. Fourth, effects of motor
experience and various kinds of training effects have been
reported, so there are at least some initial ideas and tools available for translating this research toward the improvement of
children’s mental transformation and spatial skills.
So what exactly should caregivers and educators be
doing? There are two different, but not mutually exclusive,
approaches. One approach is to bring spatial thinking into the
classroom, preferably in ways that tap into everyday experience and embodied knowledge. Another approach is to encourage learning out of the classroom, by giving children ample
opportunities to experience space and practice spatial skills at
home and in play. There are three areas in which caregivers and
educators may seek to improve spatial skills: in preschool settings, through semi-structured use of media in the classroom
or at home and by providing opportunities for free play.
Getting Spatial Thinking Into Preschool Education
A report titled Learning to Think Spatially, issued by the National
Research Council (2006), highlights the deficits in our current
understanding of spatial thinking in the classroom. There is
still a lack of specific knowledge of what kinds of experience lead to improvement, how spatial thinking may be best
infused across curricula, and how to optimally incorporate
new technologies, such as geographic information systems,
especially in the younger grades. What kinds of teaching best
support spatial learning? The hope is that better instruction
could not only improve spatial functioning in general but also
reduce differences related to gender and socioeconomic status
(Levine, Vasilyeva, Lourenco, Newcombe, & Huttenlocher,
2005), which may impede full participation of all people in
increasingly technological society.
Fortunately, there is a wealth of spatial material available for
preschool play, much of which may be further leveraged with
Volume 4—Number 3
some knowledge of the processes of spatial learning. Jigsaw
puzzles, for example, seem ideal for spatial learning. In fact,
research has found that doing jigsaw puzzles is correlated
with the spatial thinking of preschoolers, especially when
coupled with spatial language related to the challenges of the
puzzle (e.g., can you find all the pieces with a flat edge?) (Levine,
Ratliff, Huttenlocher, & Cannon, 2010). Additionally, it has
been found that spatial language does not have to be planfully
produced—simply interacting with spatial materials such
as blocks leads adults to use more spatial language when
playing with their children (Ferrara, Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek,
Newcombe, & Shallcross, 2010).
Furthermore, recent research findings suggest a close relationship between children’s learning of object names and the
emergence of object shape recognition (for an overview, see
Smith, 2009). Smith (2003) found that the number of object
names in children’s vocabularies was a better predictor of
children’s shape recognition than was age. Similarly, Jones and
Smith (2005) showed delays in visual object recognition in
children with delayed vocabulary development.
Learning the names of geometric shapes such as circle, square, and triangle is another common activity in the
preschool, and one often included as a goal in early math
curricula, but it can be enhanced by the inclusion of oddlooking as well as standard examples (i.e., a scalene triangle
as well as an equilateral triangle). Highlighting perceptually
different types of triangles may bolster children’s comprehension of what a real triangle is. Showing these kinds of shapes
supports learning that triangles are any closed figure formed
by three intersecting lines, rather than believing that a triangle is a particular perceptually arresting instance (Fisher,
Nash, Hirsh-Pasek, Newcombe, & Golinkoff, 2009; Satlow &
Newcombe, 1998). Active exploration, in combination with
dialogic enquiry (e.g., questions that pose a dilemma or prompt
curiosity), has been found to be especially beneficial for learning geometric shapes—even more so than direct instruction
(Fisher, Ferrara, Hirsh-Pasek, Newcombe, & Golinkoff, 2010).
Research shows that children as young as 3 years appreciate the relations between maps or models and the real
world (DeLoache, 1990; Huttenlocher, Newcombe, & Vasilyeva, 1999; Shusterman, Lee, & Spelke, 2008). Thus, maps
can be introduced into classrooms as early as kindergarten, as
shown in the WhereDoILive? curriculum plan devised by Marcia
Harris (2010) of the Brookside School in Michigan. The use of
maps as a spatial educational tool may be further supplemented
by a variety of classroom activities. For example, children may
be asked to find objects hidden in the classroom on the basis of
a treasure map. In a first step, children could be asked to hide
some objects according to a ___location on a map. Research has
shown that placement tasks are easier as opposed to retrieval
tasks and develop 6 months earlier on average (Huttenlocher,
Vasilyeva, Newcombe, & Duffy, 2008). In a second step,
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children could be asked to find objects, according to the information on a map. And finally, they could be asked to put stickers on maps or create their own maps to help them remember
where objects are hidden or to help a friend find a hidden object.
Purposeful Use of Media
The use of new media is taking up an increasing amount
of children’s play time. Computer games are becoming more
and more popular, and many infants under 2 years of age are
watching TV on a regular basis (Zimmerman, Christakis, &
Meltzoff, 2007). But as Paracelsus used to say, ‘‘Dosis sola facit
venenum’’—the dose makes the poison, and the right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy. The use of new media in a
purposeful way and in moderation may have beneficial effects
and provide us with tools for semi-structured education. As
reported earlier, research involving new media has shown that
playing the computer game Tetris facilitated mental rotation
skills in undergraduates and even resulted in long-term transfer effects on other spatial tasks (Terlecki et al., 2008). In
another study that explored the effects of playing a multiplayer computer game on learning of simple machines in 10- to
11-year-olds (Annetta, Mangrum, Holmes, Collazo, & Cheng,
2009), it was found that girls did just as well as boys. The
authors concluded that using computers and computer games
can potentially make science more attractive for females and
enhance female performance in science.
Some educational video and TV producers have recently
taken notice of the importance of spatial thinking. For
example, the popular children’s book protagonist Curious
George now encounters spatial challenges, such as getting
lost in a maze, on his TV show. But how well can young
children learn from watching TV? A study that compared
effects of action experience and observational experience on
14-month-olds’ mental rotation performance (Frick & Wang,
2010) indicated that observational experience did not have
the same beneficial effects as action experience. This suggests
that merely watching someone else performing actions might
have little effect on children’s spatial learning. So, what are
the chances that children learn if this person is only virtually
present via TV? A study by Troseth and DeLoache (1998)
showed that 2-year-olds were much more likely to use spatial
information from a TV screen when they were led to believe
that they were looking through a window. Furthermore,
Reiser, Tessmer, and Phelps (1984) showed that 4-year-olds
were better able to identify numbers and letters that had
been presented in a video 3 days earlier, if a live experimenter
interacted with them during the video presentation. Thus,
learning from TV seems difficult at best and has more of a
chance of success if accompanied by social interaction and if
a direct connection between what is perceived on the screen
and the real world is made clearly evident. However, even
though some evidence speaks to the educational value for 3-
108
to 5-year-olds of some TV shows (such as Sesame Street), to
date there is no conclusive evidence of benefits for children
younger than 3 years (for a review, see Christakis, 2009). At the
same time, TV often replaces other activities with guaranteed
developmental benefits, such as social interaction, creative
play, or even simply sleep.
Especially for younger children, books are more appropriate
and—as opposed to TV and videos—may be more likely to
involve parent–child interactions. Even though books only
contain static pictures, they can also help children understand
spatial transformations, if adults read them with the children
and stimulate their imagination. There are a number of
spatially challenging books that parents or teachers can
read with their children, for example Zoom, a book in which
attention continually zooms into finer and finer levels of detail;
verbal and gestural support for children in dealing with the
conceptual and graphic challenges has been found to predict
children’s scores on spatial tests (Szechter & Liben, 2004).
Free Play and Active Experience
It is important to keep in mind that preschool children need to
play, refine their motor skills, and practice their imaginative
abilities (Hirsh-Pasek, Berk, Singer, & Golinkoff, 2008). It
is through play and direct physical experience that children
gather most of their knowledge about the laws and rules of
the world they live in. Studies on children’s intuitive knowledge about physical laws have shown that, even though they
might not have abstract, verbal, or conceptual knowledge
about spatial events, they often show surprising perceptualmotor knowledge. For example, Krist, Fieberg, and Wilkening
(1993) showed that, even though children were not able to
adjust the speed of a ball that was propelled off a table, so
that it would hit different targets on the ground from different
heights, they were able to throw the ball with accurate speed.
Moreover, active movement has repeatedly been shown to
improve performance in spatial tasks (Acredolo et al., 1984;
Benson & Uzgiris, 1985; Frick & Wang, 2010; Frick, Daum,
Wilson et al., 2009; Rieser et al., 1994). In the classroom, there
is not always space to move and actively explore, but luckily
it has been shown that even merely encouraging elementary
school children to gesture can enhance their ability to reason about spatial transformations, including mental rotation
(Ehrlich, Levine, & Goldin-Meadow, 2006, 2009). Using their
hands may help children to mentally simulate spatial transformations, possibly by reducing (or ‘‘outsourcing’’) working
memory load or by taking advantage of prewired mechanisms
of sensory-motor coordination.
Even entirely internalized simulations can help children
understand spatial events. Asking children to imagine where
things will go when dropped can improve their understanding
of gravity and motion. Preschoolers are prone to think that
dropped objects will appear directly below where they were
Volume 4—Number 3
Nora S. Newcombe and Andrea Frick
released, even when they are dropped into a twisting tube
whose exit point is quite far away, but when asked to visualize
the path before responding they do much better. Simply being
asked to wait before answering does not help—visualization
is key (Joh, Jaswal, & Keen, in press).
A common and pivotal aspect of all of these suggested
activities is to do them with the children. Caregivers and
educators can then provide children with spatial language
that may help them categorize and abstract relevant aspects
of their spatial environment, draw their attention to analogies
and differences, or simply motivate thought and exploration of
space. Opportunities to practice spatial skills are omnipresent:
at home, in school, on the way to the supermarket, or on the
breakfast table. Spatial tasks and challenges are everywhere:
Which way does the sheet fit on the bed? Does the left shoelace
go over or under—and which one is the left? Will the groceries
fit in one bag? Which shapes do I get if I cut my bagel the
other way—and will it still fit in the toaster? For young
children, these questions are challenging and provide ample
opportunities to learn and think about space. Caregivers and
educators simply need to take a step back to recognize these
learning opportunities and guide children on their exploration
of space.
Acknowledgments—We are grateful to Katrina Ferrara for helpful
comments on previous versions of this article.
NOTES
1 So far, however, the evidence relates only to visualization
skills, which are more easily assessed with psychometric
tests than navigation skills. Future work is needed to
address whether certain kinds of spatial skills are more
related to STEM achievement than others or whether each
skill has some relevance. For example, Snow’s use of a
cholera map might be more tied to thinking relevant to
navigation than to visualization skill.
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