SPATIAL SKILLS

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Fostering Your Child's Spatial Skills
Preschoolers' spatial skills can vary a great deal -- though boys usually have a slight edge over girls. Here, some ways to boost your child's natural capabilities.
By Irene Daria


Why Spatial Skills Matter
Edith and Lukas are fraternal twins. They grew up in the same home, attended the same preschool, and were given the opportunity to play with the same toys.

Yet, from the time they were 3, their habits of play conformed to classic gender stereotypes. "Lukas loved blocks, and he was amazing at puzzles," says his mom, Nancy Howell, of New York City. "Edith had a lot of trouble with puzzles and had no interest in blocks. She preferred drawing, being read to, or playing pretend."

Like Lukas, many preschool boys tend to be better than girls at assembling three-dimensional toys, such as block towers or railroad tracks. And they often have a better sense of direction: which way to turn to get to the grocery store, for example.

Studies have long shown that by the time children reach adolescence, boys tend to outperform girls on tests of spatial abilities. But until recently, researchers were uncertain how early this difference manifests itself. Then in 1999, a University of Chicago study found that by the age of 4 1/2, boys have a slight edge over girls in their understanding of spatial relationships. In the study, children were asked to look at a page with two shapes and then point at the picture of what those shapes would look like if they were rotated. This task is too difficult for most children younger than 4 1/2. However, says Susan Levine, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and the study's lead author, "I believe if you had an easier task, you could document a sex difference earlier."

The source of boys' superior spatial skills may be the very hormone that makes them boys -- testosterone. Some researchers believe that this occurs because testosterone makes boys more active. "Their need for activity gets boys moving and interacting with the environment, learning about its three-dimensional aspects," says Karl Pribram, M.D., director of the Center for Brain Research and Informational Sciences at Radford University, in Radford, Virginia. (It's important to note that although boys outperform girls on average, many girls also score high on tests of spatial skills.)

Why do spatial skills matter so much? For starters, they help children do well in math and science. A 1997 study at Boston College found a link between boys' greater spatial skills and the fact that top male students do better than top female students on math SATs. Spatial skills also influence career choices. A child with strong spatial skills will be more likely to pick a career such as engineering, architecture, or aviation. And these skills are important in everyday life -- they help you read a map and find your car in a crowded parking lot.

The following activities can easily be incorporated into your daily routine. Each helps improve a child's sense of location and direction.


Boosting Spatial Skills
Here are some easy and fun activities that will help preschoolers -- boys and girls alike -- develop these crucial abilities.

Blocks
Basic free play with blocks helps sharpen spatial skills because it lets kids become familiar with and create three-dimensional structures, says Janet Hyde, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. If you want to be a bit more systematic, make a simple design on paper. Draw a stack of blocks of different colors or shapes, for example, and then urge your child to copy that design with her blocks.

Paper-Folding Activities
Have your child manipulate paper in various ways to form new shapes: She can try doing simple origami, making a hat out of construction paper, or folding a square piece of paper, and then cutting out various shapes along the folded edge to create snowflakes. "This develops spatial abilities because it helps children internally plan the physical transformation they're going to create," says Nora Newcombe, Ph.D., a psychologist at Temple University, in Philadelphia.

Jigsaw Puzzles
"These help develop spatial skills because kids have to analyze the shape in order to predict if it will fit," says Dr. Newcombe, who has conducted studies on the development of spatial skills in young children. Older preschoolers will mentally rotate the puzzle pieces to figure out where they go.

Legos
Again, free play is great, but as with blocks, helping your child follow directions from a diagram to a three-dimensional form promotes even better development of spatial skills.
Musical InstrumentsA 1997 study at the University of California at Irvine found that preschoolers who took piano lessons scored 34 percent higher in spatial-reasoning skills than children who were given computer or singing les-sons. This doesn't mean your preschooler needs music lessons -- teaching him to tap out a tune on his toy xylophone will help him develop the same skills.

Games
Any card, board, or computer games that is roughly modeled on the board game. Concentration helps build spatial skills because players must remember the location of the card or picture they are trying to match. Games involving mazes are also effective, especially if you have your child try to plan the route form one point to another. Sports such as soccer, baseball, and football, which require a child to aim a ball, are also beneficial, Dr. Hyde adds.