Callier Center for Communication Disorders, The University of Texas, Dallas, Texas, USA.
Dev Sci. 2021 Mar;24(2):e13037. doi: 10.1111/desc.13037. Epub 2020 Oct 8.
Mental rotation has emerged as an important predictor of success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). By the age of 4.5 years, boys outperform girls in these abilities. Because parents use less spatial language with girls at this age (Pruden and Levine, 2017), the amount of spatial language that children are exposed to at home is believed to be one potential contributor to this disparity in preschool age children. To date, it is unclear if this gender difference continues when children enter school. To address this question in this study, children not yet in kindergarten (PreK) and kindergarten and first grade children (K+) were recorded playing with their mothers using magnetic tile toys followed by children's completion of a mental rotation task. As expected, mothers used more spatial language with PreK boys than girls; however, this relationship reversed in K+, with mothers using significantly more spatial language with girls than boys. Surprisingly, despite this, boys outperformed girls on the mental rotation task. These findings suggest that although girls' exposure to spatial language is higher after entry into school, this language difference is not reflected in increases in mental rotation abilities. Thus, earlier exposure to spatial language may be vital for the development of mental rotation abilities.
心理旋转已成为科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）成功的重要预测因素。到 4.5 岁时，男孩在这些能力上优于女孩。由于父母在这个年龄段与女孩使用的空间语言较少（Pruden 和 Levine，2017），因此，儿童在家中接触的空间语言数量被认为是导致学前儿童这一差异的潜在因素之一。迄今为止，尚不清楚这种性别差异是否会在儿童入学后继续存在。为了解决这个问题，在这项研究中，尚未上幼儿园（PreK）和幼儿园及一年级（K+）的儿童与母亲一起使用磁性积木玩具玩耍，然后让儿童完成心理旋转任务。正如预期的那样，母亲与 PreK 男孩使用的空间语言比女孩多；然而，这种关系在 K+中发生了逆转，母亲与女孩使用的空间语言明显多于男孩。令人惊讶的是，尽管如此，男孩在心理旋转任务上的表现仍优于女孩。这些发现表明，尽管女孩在入学后接触空间语言的机会增加了，但这种语言差异并没有反映在心理旋转能力的提高上。因此，早期接触空间语言对于心理旋转能力的发展可能至关重要。
