So,
who would have thought that the loquaciousness of one’s parents could have a
significant effect on their cognitive development? Yep, me neither; however, as it turns out, parents play a
vital role in this realm.
Simply
by describing the shape and size of objects, parents are inadvertently
enhancing the spatial abilities of their preschool children, according to a
study performed by researches at the University of Chicago. The study revealed that children who
learn to use a large variety of spatial terms forecasts their spatial thinking
later in life.
The
researchers videotaped parents and their children (ranging in age from14-46
months) during customary, daily activities. The study was carried out over
four-month interludes.
The
researchers found that children whose parents used spatially related words more
frequently were highly likely to use the words in their own vocabularies. The effects were most significant for
performance on mental rotation and spatial analogies tasks.
So,
what does this mean? Simply put,
children who have a heightened awareness to spatial information are able to
decipher spatial dilemmas better than those who do not. Thus, this makes children have highly
effective ways of mentally representing objects in space.
Parents
don’t hold back…those long-winded, gibberish stories you tell your kids
actually pays off in the long run!
To view the
full article, visit:
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2011/11/09/learning.spatial.terms.improves.childrens.spatial.skills
I wonder if this works for other things as well. In grade school, I was always writing with more advanced words than what my grade level teachers expected and that was because I would learn most of the words and grammar rules by reading books of grade levels. My friends who read books that were higher than their grade levels tended to speak and write using more advanced language than those who did not read books that were more advanced for their age group. Although this is quite obvious I would have never thought the same effect could happen with spatial skills. I wonder what other subjects can help children excel in their skills by being constantly exposed to children at a young age. Could further studies entice school systems to change certain ways that they teach children basic skills?
ReplyDeleteThis study is a perfect example of the sponge-like mind of a child. Children are constantly soaking up information from their environment and learning new things at all moments of the day. Constant talking and exposing children to different situations and stimuli at an early age can only help increase learning and creative thinking. This also extends to language acquisition and phoneme pruning done very early on in life. The more phonemes that are exposed to a child at an early age, the more phonemes he will be able to pick up on throughout his life. I wonder if there are any differences in the brain in children whose parents told bedtime stories vs. those whose parents did not? Overall though, the understanding of childhood learning is an extremely important aspect of developmental psychology and parents definitely play a major role in this phase.
ReplyDeleteI find this extremely interesting. I know that my spatial skills are particularly bad and most of my childhood was spent with my mother (who is also notorious for having a poor sense of direction). I now think that her lack of spatial ability may have translated to me! I also know from my developmental psych. course that females tend to have poorer spatial skills than males. I wonder if there is any research out there showing that children raised by a single mother tend to have poorer spatial abilities than children cared for by both parents or children raised by single fathers?
ReplyDeleteOf course growing up we think that our parents don't know anything and that they don't understand what we are going through. When in reality, they been there done that. I'm sure they probably do not know that they are having a significant impact on your life but, they are. Just by playing with you, making you giggle, and giving you attention is a lot.
ReplyDeleteI also never read a lot of books growing up because I was never encouraged to and now I realize why I am such a horrible reader. Practice, practice, practice. =)