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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.

The current study explores whether individual differences in the dimensional adjectives (e.g., big, tall) children understand, relates to individual differences in two non‐verbal spatial abilities, spatial scaling and mental transformations, in bilingual children. The inclusion of English–Spanish bilingual children broadens the work in this area which has previously focused strictly on English language. Ninety‐two English–Spanish bilingual children between 37.65 and 71.87 months (42 male) participated in the study. Results show number of dimensional adjectives preschool children comprehend utilizing a new interactive, tablet‐based task relates to performance on non‐verbal spatial tasks. This research supports hypothesized relations between spatial language comprehension and spatial abilities, introduces an effective tool for examining spatial language comprehension in young children, and improves generalizability by including a bilingual sample and testing comprehension in both English and Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited options exist to evaluate the development of hippocampal function in young children. Research has established that trace eyeblink conditioning (EBC) relies on a functional hippocampus. Hence, we set out to investigate whether trace EBC is linked to hippocampal structure, potentially serving as a valuable indicator of hippocampal development. Our study explored potential associations between individual differences in hippocampal volume and neurite density with trace EBC performance in young children. We used onset latency of conditioned responses(CR) and percentage of conditioned responses (% CR) as measures of hippocampal‐dependent associative learning. Using a sample of typically developing children aged 4 to 6 years (N = 30; 14 girls; M = 5.70 years), participants underwent T1‐ and diffusion‐weighted MRI scans and completed a 15‐min trace eyeblink conditioning task conducted outside the MRI. % CR and CRonset latency were calculated based on all trials involving tone‐puff presentations and tone‐alone trials. Findings revealed a connection between greater left hippocampal neurite density and delayed CR onset latency. Children with higher neurite density in the left hippocampus tended to blink closer to the onset of the unconditioned stimulus, indicating that structural variations in the hippocampus were associated with more precise timing of conditioned responses. No other relationships were observed between hippocampal volume, cerebellum volume or neurite density, hippocampal white matter connectivity and any EBC measures. Preliminary results suggest that trace EBC may serve as a straightforward yet innovative approach for studying hippocampal development in young children and populations with atypical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]