Yang Weipeng, Liu Haidan, Chen Nanxi, Xu Peng, Lin Xunyi
S R Nathan School of Human Development, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore, Singapore.
Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Front Psychol. 2020 Aug 27;11:1938. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01938. eCollection 2020.
Spatial skills significantly predict educational and occupational achievements in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). As early interventions for young children are usually more effective than interventions that come later in life, the present meta-analysis systematically included 20 spatial intervention studies (2009-2020) with children aged 0-8 years to provide an up-to-date account of the malleability of spatial skills in infancy and early childhood. Our results revealed that the average effect size (Hedges's ) for training relative to control was 0.96 ( = 0.10) using random effects analysis. We analyzed the effects of several moderators, including the type of study design, sex, age, outcome category (i.e., type of spatial skills), research setting (e.g., lab vs. classroom), and type of training. Study design, sex, and outcome category were found to moderate the training effects. The results suggest that diverse training strategies or programs including hands-on exploration, visual prompts, and gestural spatial training significantly foster young children's spatial skills. Implications for research, policy, and practice are also discussed.
空间技能能显著预测在科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）领域的学业和职业成就。由于对幼儿的早期干预通常比后期干预更有效，因此本荟萃分析系统纳入了20项针对0至8岁儿童的空间干预研究（2009 - 2020年），以提供关于婴儿期和幼儿期空间技能可塑性的最新情况。我们的结果显示，使用随机效应分析，相对于对照组，训练的平均效应量（Hedges's ）为0.96（ = 0.10）。我们分析了几个调节因素的影响，包括研究设计类型、性别、年龄、结果类别（即空间技能类型）、研究环境（如实验室与教室）以及训练类型。研究发现，研究设计、性别和结果类别会调节训练效果。结果表明，包括实践探索、视觉提示和手势空间训练在内的多种训练策略或项目能显著促进幼儿的空间技能。还讨论了对研究、政策和实践的启示。
