The role of socioeconomic status and child's gender in parental language about spatial location

MAITA, MARÍA DEL ROSARIO; JAUCK, DANIELA; PERALTA, OLGA

San Francisco

Congreso; 44th Annual Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society; 2014

This study examined whether socioeconomic status (SES) and children?s gender were sources of variation for parental spatial linguistic input and, if so, whether these variations affected children?s spatial performance in a search task. Forty children (M=49 months, SD=6) and one of their parents participated. Participants belonged to two SES groups (low, middle). We employed a small space, a toy, and five identical boxes. The task consisted of the parent hiding the toy in one of the boxes and then guiding the child?s search verbally. We elaborated a coding system to capture parental linguistic input (spatial terms, frames of reference) and children?s responses (correct, incorrect). Increased usage of spatial terms was not linked to correct performance; however, increased usage of frames of reference was. Except for the use of terms that encode proximity, which was more frequent among middle SES parents, middle and low SES parents did not vary in their production of spatial terms; however, they varied widely in their use of frames of reference. Low SES parents named considerably fewer references than middle SES parents; consequently, their children showed a poorer performance. Girls received more spatial terms than boys overall but their performance was not better.