Preschool children who hear their parents describe the size and shape of objects and then use those words themselves perform better on tests of their spatial skills, researchers at the University of Chicago have found. The study is the first to show that learning to use a wide range of spatial words predicts children's later spatial thinking, which in turn is important in mathematics, science and technology. Children who heard and then produced 45 additional spatial terms saw, on average, a 23 percent increase in their scores on a non-verbal assessment of spatial thinking...

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