Relationship between spatial and number development: Spatial location knowledge strongly predicts numerical skills of preschoolers than mental rotation

Date

2025-8-6

Author

Yalçıner, Hüseyin

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Space helps clarify abstract mathematical symbols such as “+” or “-” signs and understand concepts used in mathematics. Many studies demonstrate the predictive role of spatial skills (mental rotation, spatial visualization, and spatial perception) in math development. However, these spatial skills do not fully represent spatial thinking, even though they capture a significant portion. Another critical portion of spatial thinking is spatial language, which involves understanding and describing an object’s different spatial features. Spatial language, as well, demonstrated to be associated with various spatial performances. The relationship between spatial language and math development remains overlooked despite the significance of spatial words used to help spatial thinking and also to produce number words. This study investigated the association between preschoolers’ spatial language, mental rotation, and several mathematical abilities. Results show a significant relationship between spatial language and both symbolic math and counting abilities, either in isolation or interaction with mental rotation. Specifically, location production skills, rather than comprehension significantly predicted math performance. However, mental rotation alone does not predict any math skills. Overall, these results align with findings that spatial language and numbers are closely related to each other and add to the literature suggesting that our mental architecture for processing numbers is closely related to our interaction with spatial locations.

Subject Keywords

Number development, Spatial skills, Spatial language, Mental rotation, Preschoolers

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/115463

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis