Spatial talk in the home environment during semi-structured play

This secondary analysis investigated parents’ spatial utterances using a video corpus collected from an ethnically and economically diverse sample of 29 mostly bilingual Spanish-English families when children were 30 months old. Play sessions were transcribed and coded for use of spatial words across five categories including spatial location, spatial dimensions, shape names, spatial transformations, and spatial features. Mothers and fathers were recorded and coded separately. Spatial utterances and actions were frequent, with spatial location being most frequent. Significantly more spatial input was provided overall to children in sessions where parents spoke more English than in sessions where they spoke more Spanish. There were no significant differences between mothers and fathers, and no significant relations between spatial input and children’s performance on a numeracy measure at preschool age.