Starting as early as the first year of life, humans possess a spatial awareness of the world around them.
Infants’ spatial awareness exhibits evolutionary biases that are found in other non-human animals, such as
prioritizing the left side of space as an initial starting point when scanning a scene or object. Adults’ spatial
awareness, on the other hand, exhibits biases that reflect the spatial vagaries of the culture’s dominant
language. For example, English-speaking adults (who read and write from left to right) associate small
numbers with the left side of space, and large numbers with the right, but this association is attenuated or
reversed in Hebrew-speaking adults (who read and write from right to left). These directional spatial
associations provide a boost to our cognition. Children and adults who represent information such as letters
and numbers in a directional, culturally reinforced, spatial manner show better learning and memory for that
information. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true – people who have noticeable deficits in using their spatial
awareness to support their numerical reasoning experience clinical impairments in mathematical cognition.
This learning disability, termed dyscalculia, effects an estimated 5% of the population and limits the academic
achievement and subsequent opportunities of those who suffer from it. The objective of the current proposal is
to take a close look at how spatial associations shift from an immature and generic spatial predisposition in
infancy, to a mature, adaptive strategy that supports efficient learning and memory later in childhood. There
are three specific aims guiding this proposal. The first is to document if and when spatial biases in infancy
recede, and the nature of the spatial biases that replace them later in development. The second is to quantify
how the culture of the learner shapes the nature of the spatial information that gets imposed and transmitted.
And the third is to determine if, how, and when parents’ behaviors inculcate different types of spatial
associations. This proposal supports NICHD’s mission of generating basic research findings (such as
determining the most effective ways to inculcate spatial structuring, and outlining the relationship between
different types of spatial structuring and early numeracy) that help to realize the full potential of typically
developing children, with potential to help as well those with impairments in mathematical or spatial cognition.