Narrative Contextual Cues
Can Predictive Contextual Cues in Storytelling Increase Spatial Intelligence?
Brief
A Children’s Storybook to Test How Prepositions, Specifically “in” and “on,” Affect a Child’s Nonlinguistic Understanding of Space
Client
Language & Cognitive Development Lab @ UCLA
Duration
Sep 2018 - Feb 2019
6 months
Roles
Experimental Stimuli Design, Illustration
Team: Michelle Luna (Graduate Advisor), Priyana Patel, Renée Kau, Michelle Leccesse, Morgan Zapasnik (Research Assistants)
Study Context
A Novel Object in Space
When presented with a novel object in space with respect to a manner of motion, children can utilize contextual cues to guide their language learning. Spatial words, such as prepositions, have semantic and syntactic qualities that can be encoded by mapping a referent to a label.
The Preposition Book Study
The Preposition Book Study seeks to answer how language input and output can tell us more about memory development and spatial intelligence. We measured the effects of language-specific experiences through preposition accuracy in the context of a narrative picture book. We hypothesized that children that were provided predictive contextual cues would perform better when tested on their prepositional knowledge. The study was administered with Los Angeles preschoolers, ages 3 to 5.
Book Design
Finding the Right Receptor for an Object
Story Objective
A bear and a penguin trying to find the right location for items
Sentence Structure
Character animal + object + preposition + receptor
Contextual Cues
Character animal (penguin, bear)
Object (apple, ball)
Background color (green, yellow)
Contextual Separation
Each preposition in the picture book was specifically tied to a condition where participants were able to apply contextual cues to distinguish spatial meaning.
No Correlation Between Contextual Cues
The levels of the character, object, and page color were divided up equally and altered for each preposition.
Illustrations
We sketched the illustrations by hand, outlined the drawings in black marker, and then digitally colored the photocopied pages using Adobe Photoshop.
Page Contents
Discussion & Findings
Language Input > Time
Based on preliminary results from pilot testing, participants who are provided contextual cues to differentiate between will be able to better learn spatial words such as “in” and “on.” While kids improve in linguistic abilities through age and development, children may require greater input than time to develop prepositional knowledge and fluency.
Spatial Language Input → Spatial Intelligence
Children deduce rules from their linguistic environment and use this information to create mental representations of space. Spatial cognition development is directly tied to spatial language input and spatial word mapping. Spatial ability is an intellectual capacity prevalent in individuals that are successful in advanced STEM fields such as mathematics, science, and engineering.
The Need for Better Applications in Educational Curricula
The educational needs of those with spatial intelligence are overlooked in comparison to mathematical and verbal skills. Children acquire spatial words differently across different languages; therefore, they are dependent upon the input, output, and foundations of the language. The educational outcomes and the notability of spatial intelligence should be addressed in current academic instruction and curricula.