ERIC Number: EJ1377635
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1524-8372
EISSN: EISSN-1532-7647
Ordinality and Verbal Framing Influence Preschoolers' Memory for Spatial Structure
Branyan, Helen; Cooper, Elisheva; Shaki, Samuel; McCrink, Koleen
Journal of Cognition and Development, v24 n1 p142-159 2023
During the preschool years, children are simultaneously undergoing a reshaping of their mental number line and becoming increasingly sensitive to the social norms expressed by those around them. In the current study, 4- and 5-year-old American and Israeli children were given a task in which an experimenter laid out chips with numbers (1-5), letters (A-E), or colors (Red-Blue, the first colors of the rainbow), and presented them with a specific order (initial through final) and direction (Left-to-right or Right-to-left). The experimenter either did not demonstrate the laying out of the chips (Control), emphasized the process of the left-to-right or right-to-left spatial layout (Process), or used general goal language (Generic). Children were then asked to recreate each sequence after a short delay. Children also completed a short numeracy task. The results indicate that attention to the spatial structuring of the environment was influenced by conventional framing; children exhibited better recall when the manner of layout was emphasized than when it was not. Both American and Israeli children were better able to recall numerical information relative to non-numerical information. Although children did not show an overall benefit for better recall of information related to the culture's dominant spatial direction, American children's tendency to recall numerical direction information predicted their early numeracy ability.
Descriptors: Preschool Children, Memory, Spatial Ability, Number Concepts, Foreign Countries, Recall (Psychology), Numeracy, Task Analysis, Numbers, Sequential Learning
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (DHHS/NIH)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United States; Israel
Grant or Contract Numbers: 1R15HD096636301