Project: Parent Mental Rotation, Verbal Social Behaviors, Spatial and Numeracy Talk

This project examined associations between parents' prosocial talk (e.g., praise), negation talk (e.g., corrections), math talk (e.g., number and spatial talk), and mental rotation ability during structured parent-child play. Fifty-one parents of 4- to 6-year-old children were observed during 10-minute block-building (Lego) and drawing tasks. Parents who produced higher quantities of prosocial talk also produced higher quantities of spatial talk during both tasks, controlling for overall talk. Parents' mental rotation task (MRT) scores were not significantly correlated with their number, spatial, or prosocial talk during either task; however, parents with higher MRT scores produced significantly fewer instances of negation talk while building with Legos, and follow-up analyses indicated this association was most pronounced for parents of daughters. This project contributes to the field by examining the extent to which parents' cognitive and social-emotional behaviors relate to their math- and spatial-relevant talk with young children, and is among the first to examine these associations in a majority-Hispanic sample of families, a historically underrepresented population in this literature.