Presenters: Karen Gonzales, Branda Sun, Julie Short, Poster Presentation
Research Title: Heritage Language Speakers and Spatial Language Learning in Preschool
Faculty Advisor: Drew Bailey
Mentor: Robert Kalinowski
The development of spatial skills during early childhood is an important part of a child’s cognitive development. For children from non-English speaking or Bilingual homes, there are noticeable differences for students who only spoke their home language prior to entering school versus students who were exposed to both English and their home language prior to entering school. Early childhood education has the tools to improve these skills; prior work has found compensatory effects for children from low-income homes and with lower initial academic skill levels enrolled in early childhood educational programs. However, little work in this area has focused on the effects of early childhood programs on abstract skills, such as spatial skills. To test whether the benefits of early childhood educational interventions could be generalized to spatial skills, we employed a spatial song and gesture intervention at a preschool center serving children primarily from low-income households. Children (n=83) were randomly assigned to receive a 3-week long song-based intervention focused on either children’s spatial gesture and vocabulary, or on vocabulary related to occupations. Children were pre- and post-tested on a test of spatial vocabulary. Children improved during the course of the study.