Building skills for Maths and Science | Integrated Learning Therapy

Skills needed for success at maths and science depend on a child’s spatial reasoning ability. This is the ability to visualise how shapes and objects move or fit together and the sooner this develops, the better the chances that the child will cope in the scientific field.

Rosanna Castro, of Florida International University, suggests that ways to support a child’s learning even before school-going age is by encouraging them to play with puzzles, blocks and spatial word.

Research (conducted at the Center for Children and Families, and published in Infant and Child Development) discovered that children as young as 3 years old use the same mental strategies as adults to solve spatial puzzles. In other words, preschoolers aren’t just guessing or copying. They’re mentally rotating whole objects in their minds with surprising speed and accuracy.

Researchers used eye-tracking technology to observe how children ages 3 to 7 approached a mental rotation task, something used in past studies with adults. The majority of the children used what’s called a “holistic strategy,” mentally rotating the object as a whole rather than breaking it down into parts. Those who used this strategy solved problems twice as fast as those who used a slower, piecemeal approach.

These skills can be supported at home and in the classroom, starting well before the age of 3.

The key is providing early exposure to spatial experiences. That might mean giving children opportunities to build with blocks or LEGO, encouraging them to rotate puzzle pieces to see what fits or letting them play with objects that challenge them to think about size, shape and space.

Talking about those activities is just as important. When parents and educators use spatial words like “under,” “around,” “bigger,” “farther” or “corner,” they’re helping children develop the mental vocabulary to reason and solve problems. Even simple moments become powerful learning opportunities when parents or educators describe spatial relationships out loud.

“When we use spatial words in everyday situations—like talking about how to stack groceries or fit toys into a bin—we’re supporting the brain’s ability to reason and problem-solve,” said Shannon Pruden, senior author and professor of psychology at FIU.

The findings build on Pruden’s earlier work showing that language shapes how children think about space, and confirm that the earlier children engage in spatial play and talk, the greater the impact on their success in STEM education.

“Kids aren’t just absorbing information, they’re thinking critically and strategically much earlier than we used to believe,” Pruden said. “And now we have the tools, and science, to help them thrive.”

More information: Karinna A. Rodriguez et al, Leveraging Eye‐Tracking Technology to Understand How Young Children Solve a Mental Rotation Task, Infant and Child Development (2025). DOI: 10.1002/icd.70018

Provided by Florida International University

Image supplied by Freepik

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.