Research by psychologists may lead to new teaching methods.

By Beth Azar
Monitor Staff

In response to children?s dwindling scores on math and geography tests, psychologists are trying to decipher how and when children develop spatial skills. Such skills are critical to understanding complex mathematical concepts as well as everyday skills like finding the restroom by using a mall directory map.

Once researchers understand how spatial skills develop, they hope to design new methods for teaching subjects such as geography, geology, science and mathematics in ways that build upon children?s abilities.

To grasp complicated maps, children must understand two concepts: representation, the idea that an object on a map stands for something in the real world, and spatial correspondence, the concept that spatial features of a representation are related in systematic ways to spatial features of the world. Spatial correspondences include scale, the concept that a map is proportionally smaller than the real world; viewing angle, the concept that a map depicts the world from a specified position (usually from the top down); and viewing azimuth, the concept that a map shows a space from a certain direction (commonly using north as the top of the page).

Psychologists are finding that children as young as age 3 understand these basic principles?much younger than previously thought. But other research indicates that understanding these principles doesn?t necessarily translate into being able to coordinate them to understand such complex images as road maps, satellite photos and diagrams.

?The research is showing us that children are developmentally prepared to start working with simple maps as early as kindergarten,? said psychologist Nora Newcombe, PhD, of Temple University. ?And the earlier we can introduce spatially complex images, the better prepared our children will be for using graphs and charts down the road.?

Early map use

Children as young as 3-and-a half-years-old can use a simple map to locate a hidden object, Newcombe and psychologist Janellen Huttenlocher, PhD, of the University of Chicago have found. In their research, funded by the National Science Foundation, they showed children a rectangular piece of paper with a dot on it. The paper represented a sandbox and the dot stood for the location of a plastic disc. Using that simple map, the children had to figure out the disc?s location in the sandbox (the disc was covered with sand).

All of the 25 4-year-olds pointed to the correct locations in the sandbox. Fifteen of 25 3-year-olds did as well on the test as the 4-year-olds. The other 10 seemed to not use the map at all.

The children must be using proportion rather than distance to calculate the location of the disc, said Huttenlocher. In other words, they notice that the dot is a quarter of the way from the bottom edge of the rectangle and therefore the disc must be a quarter of the way from the bottom edge of the sandbox.

A preference for layout

Huttenlocher and Newcombe?s study indicates that young children have access to some basic information about scale. But work by David Uttal, PhD, of Northwestern University, implies that they don?t necessarily use it.

In several studies, Uttal found that when preschool children have to attend to more than one object, they notice the overall layout and relative position of the objects more than they notice the scale of the objects or the distance between them.

For example, in one study he showed groups of children and adults a posterboard that represented a room. Photos of six different toy animals were placed in a distinct pattern around the room.

The study participants then entered a real room and, using real toy animals, had to recreate the pattern as they saw it on the posterboard.

About 80 percent of preschool-ers, ages 4 and 5, preserved the overall configuration of the animals, but failed to place them in the correct locations. And they didn?t increase the scale?the distance between the animals?to account for the bigger scale of the room.

?They basically reconstructed the correct configuration right where they stood as they entered the room, with no concern for overall position but a keen sense of preserving the correct pattern,? said Uttal.

Children ages 6 and 7 and adults performed the task without error.

?It seems like [preschoolers] can use scaling, but there is a cognitive preference for general layout,? said Uttal who received funding for this research from the National Institute of Mental Health?s B/START program for new investigators.

Putting it all together

Uttal?s conclusion that very young children may have access to information about scale but are unable to use it in complex situations speaks to the developmental nature of spatial ability, said Pennsylvania State University psychologist Lynn Liben, PhD. Different spatial skills develop gradually and at different times, and understanding that may help researchers teach to children?s strengths at any given time.

In particular, giving children the opportunity to explore spatial relationships?as interactive software can do?may help children deconstruct spatial misconceptions, including the idea that the world must be flat because that?s how it seems.

Liben is particularly interested in children?s understanding of complex spatial relationships, such as the ones found on real maps?including road maps, satellite photos and aerial photos. When given more complex spatial maps, young preschool-ers, ages 3 and 4, sometimes make qualitative errors in their understanding of representations, said Liben.

For example, when they see a road map with red lines representing the roads, these children tend to believe that the road is really red.

She has developed a six-stage model of spatial development. Each skill develops over time with some developing before others.

For example, representational understanding of maps?that one object stands for another?develops earlier than spatial understanding of maps?that the location of two objects on a map represent their actual positions relative to each other in the real world, said Liben.

So as one skill develops, children may have access to it in simplistic situations, but not in more complex situations where the more established skills will take precedence. In other words, children can do the types of tasks Huttenlocher, Newcombe and Uttal asked of them in their studies, but they may have trouble putting those individual skills together to solve a more complicated task.

Understanding that spatial ability comes gradually to children is important so that parents and teachers can introduce ideas in ways that work with a child?s abilities.

Liben is currently working on a project funded by the National Science Foundation with other researchers who use spatial representation in their work, including former astronaut and physicist Sally Ride, PhD, of the University of California at San Diego, and geologist Eric Frost, PhD, at San Diego State University. They are seeking to determine how to use technology to make complex maps and images easier for young children to understand.

Their work seems to show that simply exposing children to complex images of the world doesn?t automatically help them understand the spatial relationships of the universe.

For example, a group of third-graders, who had been working with satellite photos and maps to improve their understanding of the spatial relationship between the Earth, the sun, the stars and themselves, still struggled with the concept of a round world surrounded by stars. Although most of the children drew a roundish Earth, many made the surface where people live flat, and they clumped the stars above the people rather than scattering them around the globe.

A more interactive approach might work better, Liben believes. She and her colleagues are experimenting with software that gives children control over how they view an image, allowing them to ?walk around? in a computer-generated image of a landscape, then zoom out to see it from above as they would see it from a satellite photo.

?We want to see what types of technology make it harder or easier to understand the correspondence between two representations of the same thing,? said Liben.

?We think that it is important that the child is able to control the interaction with the representations. If we?re right, the same techniques might be useful for adults, many of whom still have trouble reading maps.?