RUNNING HEAD: Relation between language and spatial cognition
Producing spatial words is not enough: Understanding the relation between language and spatial cognition
Hilary E. Miller 1 , Haley A. Vlach 2 , & Vanessa R. Simmering 1
1
Department of Psychology, McPherson Eye Research Institute, Waisman Center,
2
Department of Educational Psychology, Wisconsin Center for Educational Research
University of Wisconsin – Madison
Corresponding Author:
Hilary E. Miller
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin – Madison
1202 W. Johnson St.
Madison, WI 53706 hemiller@wisc.edu
WORD COUNT: 3,973
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Relation between language and spatial cognition 2
Highlights

Previous research suggests that the relation between language and spatial cognition early in development arises through children having words to encode relevant spatial relations.

The current research provides support for another hypothesis: this relation arises from children’s skills in using their language knowledge to select task-relevant cues and not solely from their abilities to produce spatial words.

The findings also demonstrate that the relation between selection in language use and spatial cognition is not specific to use of spatial words but generalizes to task-relevant non-spatial language.

Though focusing on children’s use of language in the moment of a task, these findings provide novel insight into the mechanisms connecting language and spatial cognition.

Relation between language and spatial cognition
Abstract
Relations between language and spatial cognition early in development have been documented
3 through both experimental and correlational studies. Past research has explained this relation in terms of language enabling children to encode relevant spatial cues. The current study examined another hypothesis: the relation arises from children’s selective use of language rather than from their knowledge of spatial words alone. We tested whether children’s selection of task-relevant cues predicted their spatial skills above and beyond demographic and vocabulary factors.
Children’s selection was measured through a disambiguation production task in which they described the location of a target object, with properties of the referent objects changing across trials. The relevance of color and size cues for disambiguating the referent object’s location varied across trials, while the location cues remained relevant. Children also completed four spatial tasks and two vocabulary assessments. Results supported our hypothesis; children’s selection of relevant cues was more predictive of their spatial skills than was their productive spatial vocabulary. Furthermore, analysis of children’s selection of cues indicated that the use of spatial words could not completely explain this relation. These findings provide evidence for selection as a mechanism connecting language to spatial cognition and demonstrate the importance of considering how children use language in the moment of a task.
Key words: spatial cognition, language use, spatial vocabulary, development

Relation between language and spatial cognition
Producing spatial words is not enough: Understanding the relation between language and
4 spatial cognition
Multiple lines of research provide evidence that spatial language relates to the development of spatial skills (e.g., Dessalegn & Landau, 2008, 2013; Hermer-Vazquez, Moffet,
& Munkholm, 2001; Loewenstein & Gentner, 2005; Pruden, Levine, & Huttenlocher, 2011;
Pyers, Shusterman, Senghas, Spelke, & Emmorey, 2010). Research shows that children with higher productive spatial vocabulary tend to perform better on spatial tasks (Hermer-Vazquez et al., 2001; Miller, Simmering, & Patterson, 2015; Pruden et al., 2011; Simms & Gentner, 2008) and that providing children with verbal cues highlighting task-relevant dimensions and features increases spatial performance (Dessalegn & Landau, 2008, 2013; Loewenstein & Gentner, 2005;
Miller et al., 2015; Shusterman, Lee, & Spelke, 2011). These findings have been interpreted as evidence that having spatial language enables children to encode relevant spatial cues, thus facilitating their spatial performance. However, does having task-relevant language alone enable children to encode relevant spatial information or are there additional processes involved? The current research investigates how children’s use of spatial language in the moment of a task relates to their spatial skills beyond their abilities to produce spatial words.
Relation between Language and Spatial Cognition
Correlational studies show that children’s production of spatial words is positively associated with their spatial skills (e.g., Hermer-Vazquez et al., 2001; Pruden et al., 2011; Simms
& Gentner, 2008). For example, children’s production of particular spatial words, such as “left” and “right” (Hermer-Vazquez et al., 2001) or “middle” (Simms & Gentner, 2008), correlates with their performance on spatial tasks that depend on representing particular relations.
Additionally, the total number of spatial words that children produce predicts their spatial

Relation between language and spatial cognition performance across different tasks (Pruden et al., 2011). This relation between spatial word production and children’s spatial skills is a robust effect, as it persists after controlling for other
5 contributing factors such as comprehension of spatial words (Hermer-Vazquez et al., 2001) or general receptive vocabulary (Pruden et al., 2011). Theorists interpret these findings as evidence that knowing spatial words enables children to verbally encode relevant spatial information, and thus supports their spatial performance (e.g., Hermer-Vazquez et al., 2001; Pruden et al., 2011).
Experimental research provides additional evidence for verbal encoding as a mechanism relating spatial language to spatial cognition by showing that providing children with verbal cues containing relevant spatial language enhances their spatial performance (Dessalegn & Landau,
2008, 2013; Loewenstein & Gentner, 2005; Shusterman et al., 2011). In these studies, preschool-aged children were exposed to verbal cues specifying relations among objects or features, either before or during the spatial tasks. This work demonstrated that children’s spatial performance increased when an experimenter provided them with task-relevant spatial words, such as “I’m putting the winner next to the box” (Loewenstein & Gentner, 2005).
In addition to spatial language, non-spatial task-relevant language also promotes spatial performance. Providing children with asymmetrical predicates, such as “the yellow one is prettier” (Dessalegn & Landau, 2013), or highlighting that “the red wall can help you find the sticker” (Shusterman et al., 2011) during spatial tasks can increase children’s performance.
These findings demonstrate that the relation between language and spatial cognition is not limited to spatial words, but arises through non-spatial language conveying task-relevant information. It is important to note that these non-spatial words used to promote spatial performance are words that preschool-aged children can comprehend and produce. Yet the enhanced effect of providing these non-spatial cues on children’s spatial performance suggests

Relation between language and spatial cognition that children may not spontaneously be using this type of language in support of their spatial
6 performance. This suggests that having words to encode relevant spatial information cannot fully account for the link between language and spatial cognition.
An important factor yet to be considered in regards to the relation between language and spatial cognition is children’s abilities to be selective in their use of language. Research on children’s skills in communicating spatial information shows that developmental changes exist in children’s selection of task-relevant spatial information when describing spatial locations
(Craton, Elicker, Plumert, & Pick, 1990; Plumert & Hawkins, 2001; Plumert & Nichols-
Whitehead, 2007). For example, Plumert and Nichols-Whitehead (2007) found that over the preschool period, children’s preferences for using color, size, and location cues to disambiguate object locations vary with age, with children often struggling to select the most relevant cues.
Considering children’s difficulties in selecting task-relevant cues when communicating spatial information, it is likely that children fail to select task-relevant cues through language in spatial contexts, despite having words to describe these cues. Thus knowing spatial words may not be enough to enable children to encode relevant spatial information to support their spatial performance. Rather, the enabling factor may be children’s abilities to be selective in their use of language when performing spatial tasks.
Current Study
The current study tested the hypothesis that children’s selection of task-relevant language is more predictive of their spatial skills than is their general ability to produce spatial words. We measured 4-year-old children’s selection of task-relevant language by administering a disambiguation production task that tested skills in producing language to disambiguate a target object’s location. In this task, children described the location of a target object in a spatial scene.

Relation between language and spatial cognition
The trials varied in the number of relevant cues for describing the target object’s location, such
7 that the child could use any of three types of cues (color, size, and location), any of two types of cues (color and location or size and location), or only one type of cue (location). In addition, children completed four spatial tasks and a test of general receptive vocabulary while caregivers completed a productive spatial vocabulary checklist. We assessed whether children’s disambiguation performance predicted their spatial performance above and beyond demographics (age, gender) and vocabulary factors (productive spatial vocabulary, total number of spatial words children mentioned during the disambiguation production task, general receptive vocabulary). We controlled for these factors to isolate their contributions when evaluating the relation between children’s communication of task-relevant spatial information and their spatial performance (e.g., Levine, Huttenlocher, Taylor, & Langrock, 1999; Pruden et al., 2011; Voyer,
Voyer, & Bryden, 1995).
Method
Participants
Forty-two 4-year-old children ( M = 4.56 years, SD = 0.40 years, 23 females) participated in the study. An additional seven children participated but were excluded for incomplete data
(2), non-compliance (4), or experimenter error (1). Participants were recruited through a database compiled by a university affiliated research center.
Design and Procedures
Children participated in a familiarization production task, a disambiguation production task, four spatial tasks, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)-IV (Dunn & Dunn,
2007) as well as two other production tasks not reported. The tasks were administered in a quasi-randomized order with these constraints: each spatial task followed a production task; the familiarization production task came after the first spatial task which preceded the first

Relation between language and spatial cognition production task; and the PPVT-IV was last. Caregivers completed a productive spatial vocabulary checklist. Sessions were video- and audio-recorded. Children received small prizes
8 and were offered breaks between tasks. Each session lasted approximately 45 to 60 minutes.
Familiarization and disambiguation production tasks. A familiarization production task was used to promote understanding of the disambiguation production task and to increase children’s comfort talking aloud. Children viewed 10 PowerPoint slides showing one familiar object (e.g., apple) on each slide and described what they saw to a stuffed animal who was not looking at the screen. To discourage pointing, the experimenter instructed children to sit on their hands throughout the production tasks.
The disambiguation production task tested children’s skills at describing a target object’s location relative to referent objects within different scenes. The task was administered on a computer using PowerPoint. Each trial included three referent objects (e.g., three tables) distributed diagonally across each slide (Figure 1). The target object (i.e., mouse) was always located in a support relation to one of the referent objects. On each trial, the experimenter asked children to describe the location of a target object to a stuffed animal who was not looking at the screen. Across four trial types, the number of disambiguating cues varied such that children could use any of three cues (color, size, and location; Figure 1A), two cues (color and location, size and location; Figures 1B and 1C), or one cue (location; Figure 1D) to fully disambiguate the target object’s location.
The disambiguation production task included 24 trials presented in one of four randomized orders. For each cue trial type, there were 6 trials: 2 trials for each possible target object’s location (front, middle, or back referent; see Figure 1). The position of each color and size cue was randomized across trials (i.e., position was not confounded with particular featural

Relation between language and spatial cognition 9 cues). Children received stickers and viewed short attention-getter videos after every three trials to increase motivation.
Spatial tasks. Children participated in four spatial tasks: Spatial Analogies Task
(Huttenlocher & Levine, 1990; Pruden et al., 2011), Children’s Mental Transformation Task
1
(Levine et al., 1999; Pruden et al., 2011), Picture Rotation Test (Quaiser-Pohl, Rohe, &
Amberger, 2010; Quaiser-Pohl, Rohe, & Marke, 2010), and Feature Binding Task (Dessalegn &
Landau, 2008, 2013), see Figure 2. These tasks were used to obtain a general measure of children’s spatial skills. In the Spatial Analogies Task (13 trials; Figure 2A), children viewed a picture depicting two objects in a spatial relation and choose which of four other pictures shared the same relation. In the Mental Transformation Task (10 trials; Figure 2B), children saw two pieces of a shape and selected which of four shapes the two pieces would make if combined. In the Picture Rotation Test (16 trials; Figure 2C), children viewed a picture of an object rotated up to 180° and mentally rotated the object to identify its match out of three options. In the Feature
Binding Task (24 trials; Figure 2D), children saw a square with two different colors on opposite sides and chose a matching figure out of three options following a 1 second delay.
Vocabulary assessments. The PPVT-IV measures children’s receptive vocabulary and involved the children pointing to one of four pictures depicting the target word. The spatial vocabulary checklist measured children’s productive spatial vocabulary and included 80 words taken from both the MCDI: Words and Sentences (Fenson et al., 1994) and from a spatial word coding manual (Cannon, Levine, & Huttenlocher, 2007). Caregivers indicated words they have
1 A short form of the Spatial Analogies and Children’s Mental Transformation Task adapted from Pruden et al.
(2011) was used.

Relation between language and spatial cognition 10 heard their child produce from the following spatial categories: location, position, feature, shape, and quantity (see Appendix A).
Coding and Measurement
Disambiguation production task . Research assistants blind to the hypotheses transcribed and coded the disambiguation production task. Two research assistants transcribed each session, obtaining an inter-rater reliability of 89% agreement across trials. Disagreements were resolved by a third research assistant, who was blind to the first two transcripts, transcribing the trials on which the first two transcribers disagreed.
A second set of research assistants coded the children’s responses from the transcripts.
Coders calculated a disambiguation score for each child by counting the number of possible locations the child described. The scores from most to least precise included: 1 = uniquely described one location (e.g., “on the middle chair”); 2 = described two possible locations (e.g.,
“in the corner”); and 3 = described three possible locations (e.g., “on a blue chair” when all the chairs were blue). Coders also scored the number of times children mentioned the color or size of a referent object, and used spatial terms. From all spatial terms mentioned, we separately categorized location terms from the other types of spatial terms mentioned, defined as words referring to the referent object’s location in the scene (e.g., the front chair). The total number of spatial terms mentioned was used for the regression analysis and location terms were used in a follow-up analysis. Inter-rater reliability was high for all measures, r s > .91, and disagreements were resolved by the first author.
Spatial tasks. The experimenter marked children’s spatial task responses online. Eighty percent of the responses were checked by a second research assistant from the video-recordings
(reliability agreements > 97%). Disagreements were resolved by a third researcher. Proportion

Relation between language and spatial cognition correct was calculated for each spatial task. To adjust for different chance levels across tasks
11
(due to different numbers of alternatives; .25 on Spatial Analogies and Mental Transformation
Tasks, .33 on Picture Rotation Test and Feature Binding Task), we normalized scores by taking each child’s score minus chance, then dividing by one minus chance, resulting in scores with 0 as chance performance and 1 as perfect performance. A composite spatial performance score was calculated for each child averaging their adjusted scores across the four spatial tasks.
Vocabulary tasks. The experimenter marked children’s responses while administering the PPVT-IV and terminated testing when the child responded incorrectly on eight or more trials within a 12-trial block (following the standard instructions). Research assistants calculated children’s standardized scores offline using established norms (Dunn & Dunn, 2007).
Productive spatial vocabulary was calculated as the proportion of words caregivers checked.
Results
The study investigated the relation between children’s selection of task-relevant spatial cues and their spatial performance. We hypothesized that individual differences in 4-year-olds’ selection of language to precisely describe target object’s locations during the disambiguation production task would predict their spatial composite score above and beyond demographics
(age, gender), and vocabulary factors (productive spatial vocabulary, total number of spatial terms mentioned during the disambiguation production task, PPVT-IV score). Table 1 presents descriptive and correlational statistics on these measures.
To evaluate our hypothesis, we conducted a set of regression analyses (Table 2).
Children’s spatial composite score was regressed on demographics (age, gender), vocabulary
(productive spatial vocabulary, total number of spatial words mentioned during disambiguation production task, PPVT-IV score), and disambiguation score, adding these three factors to the

Relation between language and spatial cognition 12 model in separate steps. As hypothesized, children’s disambiguation score predicted their spatial composite score above and beyond all other factors in the model, p = .019 (Figure 3). These results suggest that the relation between language and spatial cognition is not fully explained by language knowledge, but also reflects children’s use of this knowledge to select task-relevant cues in the moment of a task.
To further understand the relation between children’s selection of relevant cues for disambiguation and their spatial skills, we grouped participants based on the types of cues they produced during the disambiguation production task. That is, we were interested in what types of words children used to disambiguate referents effectively. Children were categorized based on whether they mentioned on any trial color, size, location cues or any combination of these cues. As shown in Table 3, children were quite variable in their use of these cues during the disambiguation production task. For example, more than half the sample (59%) never used location cues to describe the referent object (e.g., front chair), despite their relevance and the high proportion of caregivers indicating that their child produced them on the spatial vocabulary checklist (front = .85, middle =.88, and back =.90). Additionally, one third of the sample never used color, size, or location cues (5 participants)
2
or only provided one type of cue throughout the entire task (9 participants). This suggests that some children may not have changed their descriptions across trials. To assess whether variations in children’s selection of different types of cues was related to their spatial performance, we conducted two additional types of analyses.
First, we evaluated whether variability in the disambiguation measure was related to differences in children’s mentioning of location terms during the disambiguation production
2 An example of a trial in which a child did not use any type of cues would be mentioning the referent object without providing disambiguating cues (e.g., “the mouse is on a block”).

Relation between language and spatial cognition task.
3
We tested whether children who used location terms on any trial ( N = 17) performed
13 better on the spatial tasks than those who never used location terms ( N = 25). We conducted a two-tailed independent samples t-test on spatial composite score by use of location terms (used, never used) and found a trend in which children who ever used a location term performed better on the spatial tasks than those who never used a location term (see means in the bottom two rows of Table 3), t (40) = 1.85, p = .072,
η p
2
= .085. This suggests that producing location terms during the disambiguation production task may account for some variance in children’s spatial performance but cannot fully explain the relation between the disambiguation score and children’s spatial skills. That is, production of relevant spatial words was not enough to account for spatial performance.
The second set of analyses tested whether children’s skills in changing their cue selection across different trial types in the disambiguation production task predicted their spatial performance. To perform well on the disambiguation measure, the child could use location terms on every trial or adapt their language based on the different relevance of cues across trials.
Only three participants used location terms on every trial (all in the location only group in Table
3). This suggests that most children with good disambiguation scores used different types of cues across trial types. To test for effects of changes in production across trial types, we calculated an adaptation score for each child by subtracting the proportion of trials in which the child mentioned color (or size) when it was a relevant cue from the proportion of trials in which it was not a relevant cue. For example, a child who mentioned color on all trials would have a score of 0, but a child who mentioned color only on trials when colors was a relevant cue (Figure
3 In the regression model, we used the total number of spatial words mentioned rather than specifically using locations terms because the total number of spatial terms was more highly correlated with spatial performance.
However in the current analysis, we examined differences among children in use of location terms because these terms always disambiguated the referent and there was variability in whether children ever used versus never used these terms.

Relation between language and spatial cognition
1a and 1b) would have a score of 1. We averaged the difference scores for color and size to
14 create one adaptation score per child. Children’s adaptation scores were significantly correlated with their spatial composite scores ( r = .38, p = .013) and disambiguation scores ( r = -.40, p =
.008), indicating that better adaptation was related to better disambiguation and higher spatial performance. These findings suggest that the disambiguation score is capturing children’s sensitivity to adapting their language to spatial scenes. Combined with the analysis of children’s production of locations terms described above, these results indicate that children’s use of taskrelevant language—not just spatial language—was important to their success in the disambiguation task and predicted their spatial performance.
Discussion
This study examined whether children’s selection of task-relevant spatial information was more predictive of their spatial performance than their spatial word production. As hypothesized, children’s skills at disambiguating target object’s locations predicted their spatial composite score above and beyond demographics (age, gender) and vocabulary factors
(productive spatial vocabulary, total number of spatial words children mentioned during the disambiguation production task, PPVT-IV score). This finding suggests that knowing taskrelevant words is not enough to support children’s spatial performance; instead, children need to be selective in their use of language.
How does children’s selection of task-relevant cues relate to their spatial skills?
Children’s use of disambiguating spatial words may explain this relation. Our findings showed that children who used location terms (always disambiguating) had marginally better spatial performance than those who never used location terms. These findings are consistent with past research demonstrating that location term production is associated with children’s spatial

Relation between language and spatial cognition 15 performance (Hermer-Vazquez et al., 2001; Simms & Gentner, 2008). However, the small effect size ( η p
2 = .085) found in our sample suggests that producing location terms is not the only factor underlying the relation between children’s language use and their spatial skills.
The current results provide stronger evidence for the relation emerging as a result of children’s adaptive use of multiple types of task-relevant cues. Children who adaptively changed their language across trials in the disambiguation production task, using color and size cues more often on trials when it was relevant versus irrelevant for disambiguation, had higher spatial performance. It should be noted that the adaptation score is independent of children’s spatial word production, as the adaptation score only captured children’s selective use of non-spatial language (i.e., color and size). These findings are consistent with prior research in showing that non-spatial task-relevant language can facilitate children’s spatial performance (Dessalegn &
Landau, 2013; Shusterman et al., 2011). Furthermore, the current findings extend past research by showing that selecting task-relevant language (whether spatial or not) is an important mechanism underlying the relation between language and spatial cognition. Taken together, these findings suggest that the mechanism connecting language to spatial cognition is more than just knowing spatial words to encode task-relevant cues; children’s use of their language based on the task demands also plays an important role in spatial skills.
Theories of the Relation between Language and Spatial Cognition
The current findings have implications for theories of the relations between language and spatial cognition. The dominant contemporary view considers language as a tool that can facilitate spatial encoding (Dessalegn & Landau, 2008; Hermer-Vazquez et al., 2001;
Loewenstein & Gentner, 2005; Pruden et al., 2011; Shusterman et al., 2011). Language is proposed to affect spatial cognition by changing children’s spatial behavior (Hermer-Vazquez et

Relation between language and spatial cognition 16 al., 2001; Shusterman et al., 2011) or promoting their attention to spatial information (Dessalegn
& Landau, 2008; Pruden et al., 2011). These theories view language as leading children to be selective in their encoding of spatial cues. The findings of the current study are congruent with claims that selection is an important process linking language and spatial cognition. However, the current findings demonstrate that being able to produce language is not the only factor involved in children’s abilities to be selective in their encoding. Instead, the findings provide evidence that children need to be selective in their use of language.
Considering selection as an important mechanism, is selection specific to language or is it a more general mechanism influencing both language and spatial cognition? Previous research suggests that language can promote spatial cognition through helping children verbally encode task-relevant spatial information (e.g., Loewenstein & Gentner, 2005; Shusterman et al., 2011).
It is possible that children who are more selective in using language are better at verbally encoding task-relevant cues during spatial task. However, there is mixed evidence as to whether verbal encoding is a mechanism that adults or children reliably use on their own during spatial tasks (Hermer-Vazquez, Spelke, & Katsnelson, 1999; Nardini, Burgess, Breckenridge, &
Atkinson, 2006; Ratliff & Newcombe, 2008). Alternatively, selection may not be specific to language, but rather is a more general mechanism supporting both language and spatial cognition. It could be that children who selectively identify relevant cues in a given context learn spatial words more easily (by abstracting the relevant cues across instances when a word is used), produce more relevant spatial (and non-spatial) words in settings like the current disambiguation production task, and have higher spatial performance. It is also possible that the relations among selection, language, and spatial skills are not unidirectional, but rather these skills influence each other in multiple ways over development. Further research investigating

Relation between language and spatial cognition these possibilities is needed to understand how selection impacts the relation between language
17 and spatial cognition.
In conclusion, the current research suggests that having words to verbally encode taskrelevant spatial information is an incomplete explanation for the relation between language and spatial cognition. Rather, children’s adaptive use of their language knowledge to select taskrelevant cues is a stronger predictor of their spatial skills. This research highlights the importance of understanding both children’s knowledge of language and how they use language in the moment of a task when examining the mechanisms underlying the relation between language and spatial cognition.

Relation between language and spatial cognition
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Relation between language and spatial cognition 21
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics and Pearson’s r Correlations of Measures
Measures
M
95% CI
Range
2
3
4
1. Spatial
Composite
Score
0.42
0.30 – 0.54 4.50 - 4.63 ----
0.05 - 0.80 3.92 - 5.11 ----
0.45**
-0.28
0.34*
2. Age
4.56
-0.21
0.12
3. Gender
----
-0.12
4. PPVT-IV
123.93
101 - 151
5. Spatial
Vocabulary
0.68
6. Number of
Spatial Terms
1.25
0. 11 - 0.98 0.13 - 2.83
7. Disambiguation
Score
1.88
120.05 - 127.80 0.62 - 0.74 1.07 - 1.43
1 – 3
5 0.32* 0.05 -0.23 0.37*
6 0.21 0.06 0.09 0.11 0.22
7 -0.45* -0.14 -0.03 -0.25 -0.16 -0.45**
Note.
* p < .05, ** p < .01. CI = confidence interval of the mean. Spatial Composite score was normalized for differing levels of chance across tasks (see text for details), resulting in a chance level of 0. Gender was contrast coded (-.5 = female, .5 = male). The
PPVT-IV is a standardized score ranging from 20 – 160. Spatial Vocabulary is a proportion score. Number of spatial terms was calculated by averaging the total number of spatial terms mentioned during the disambiguation task across all trial types. The disambiguation score ranges from 1 – 3 (most to least precise).

Table 2
Hierarchical Regression Analysis Predicting Spatial Composite Score b SE b
β
R 2 ΔR 2
Predictors
Step 1: Demographics
Age
Gender
0.21
-0.08
0.07 0.41**
0.06 -0.19
ΔF
0.24 0.24 6.19**
0.37 0.13
2.47
t
Step 2: Vocabulary
Age
Gender
PPVT-IV
Spatial Vocabulary
0.19 0.07 0.38**
-0.06
0.00
0.17
0.06 -0.15
0.00 0.20
0.15 0.16
Number of Spatial Terms 0.05 0.05 0.15
Step 3: Disambiguation 0.46 0.09 5.99*
Age
Gender
PPVT-IV
Spatial Vocabulary
0.18 0.07 0.35*
-0.07 0.05 -0.16
0.00 0.00 0.14
0.17 0.14 0.17
Number of Spatial Terms 0.00 0.05 0.00
Disambiguation Score -0.12 0.05 -0.35*
Note.
t p = .077, * p < .05, ** p < .01. Gender was contrast coded (-.5 = female, .5 = male). The disambiguation score ranges from 1 – 3 (most to least precise).

Relation between language and spatial cognition
23
Table 3
Grouping of Participants by Types of Cues Produced during Disambiguation Task
Cue Type #Participants
Disambiguation
Score
Spatial
Composite
Score
None
Color Only
5
5
3
2.48
0.26
0.32
Size Only
Location Only
Color & Location
Color & Size
Size & Location
0
4
1
15
1
--
1.05
1.08
1.84
1.67
--
0.62
0.43
0.43
0.41
All Cues
No Location Cues
Location Cues
11
25
17
0.82 0.46
2.20 0.37
1.41 0.41
Note.
The disambiguation score ranges from 1 – 3 (highest to lowest precision). Spatial
Composite score was calculated by normalizing the proportion of correct scores from each spatial task for different levels of chance. The No Location Cues includes ( N = 25) participants that were grouped as None, Color Only, Size Only, and Color & Size. The Location Cues includes participants ( N =17) that were grouped as Location Only, Color & Location, Size &
Location, and All Cues.

Relation between language and spatial cognition
24
Figure 1 . Examples of the four trial types in the disambiguation production task: A) a three cue trial with color, size, and location cues; B) a two cue trial with color and location cues; C) a two cue trial with size and location cues; and D) a one cue trial with only location cues.

Relation between language and spatial cognition
25
Figure 2 . Example trials of spatial tasks. A) In the Spatial Analogies Task, children were asked to “select the picture that goes best with that picture (target picture).” B) In the Children’s
Mental Transformation Task, children were asked to “select the shape that the pieces make.” C)
In the Picture Rotation Test, children were asked “which one of these bears (picture) is the same as the first bear?” D) In the Feature Binding Task, children saw the target square and were asked after a 1s delay, to “select the square that is the same as the one you just saw.”

Relation between language and spatial cognition
26
Figure 3 . The relation between children’s disambiguation score and their spatial composite score. The prediction line represents the effect of disambiguation on spatial task average, while controlling for age, gender, PPVT-IV score, spatial vocabulary, and number of spatial words used during the disambiguation task. The error bars represent + 1 standard error for point estimates from the regression model.

Relation between language and spatial cognition
27
Appendix A
Productive Spatial Vocabulary Questionnaire
Children understand many more words than they can say. We are particularly interested in the SPATIAL WORDS that your child SAYS (e.g., words that describe relationships between objects’ sizes or locations, properties of objects’ sizes or locations, or objects’ shapes). Please go through this list and check the words that you have heard your child use.
This is a “catalogue” of all words that are used by children of a variety of ages. Do not worry if your child says only a few of these words right now.
Words Says
Above
Below
Under
Front
Back
Behind
Between
Words
Across
Apart
Together
Words Says
By
Next to
Near
Close
Far
Up
Down
Says Words
Away
Backward
Forward
Says
Separate Beside
On
Words Says
Bottom
Top
Center
Corner
Middle
High
Low
Words Says
Somewhere
Turn
Sideways
Opposite
Over
Words Says
Inside
Outside
Right
Left
Among
Within
In
Words Says
Reverse
Around
Right sideup
Upsidedown
Rotate Flip
Words Says
Big
Little
Large
Small
Words Says
Square
Circle
Words Says
Tiny
Long
Short
Tall
Words
Triangle
Rectangle
Says
Words Says
Wide
Curve
Diagonal
Edge
Words
Diamond
(Shape)
Heart
(Shape)
Says
Words Says
Flat
Line
Side
Zigzag
Words
Star
(Shape)
Pentagon
Says