Early
puzzle play can help boost spatial skills.
Washington: Engaging children in
puzzle play can help in the development of spatial skills, which has
implication for STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers
later in their life, say experts. A study of University of Chicago researchers has found that
children who play with puzzles between ages 2 and 4 develop better spatial
skills.
Puzzle
play was found to be a significant predictor of spatial skill after controlling
for differences in parents’ income, education and the overall amount of parent
language input.
“The
children who played with puzzles performed better than those who did not, on
tasks that assessed their ability to rotate and translate shapes,” said
psychologist Susan Levine, a leading expert on mathematics development in young
children.
The ability to mentally transform shapes is an
important predictor of STEM. Activities such as early puzzle play may lay the
groundwork for the development of this ability, the study found. For the
research, 53 child-parent pairs from diverse socio-economic backgrounds
participated in a longitudinal study, in which researchers video-recorded
parent-child interactions for 90-minute sessions that occurred every four
months between 26 and 46 months of age.
The
parents were asked to interact with their children as they normally would and
about half of the children in the study were observed playing with puzzles at
least once.
Higher
income parents tended to engage children with puzzles more frequently. Both
boys and girls who played with puzzles had better spatial skills, but boys
played with more complicated puzzles than girls, and the parents of boys
provided more spatial language during puzzle play and were more engaged in play
than the parents of girls.
-
ANI
Source:
The Tribune, Jalandhar (India), Tuesday
February 21, 2012.
