Using eye-tracking to understand relations between visual attention and language in children's spatial skills

Relations between children's spatial language and spatial skills raise questions regarding whether the effects are unique to language or reflect non-linguistic processes. Different paradigms provided mixed evidence: experimenter-provided language supports spatial performance more than visual cues; however, children's non-verbal attention predicts their spatial performance more than their language production. The current study used eye-tracking during spatial recall to compare effects of language versus visual cues. Four- to five-year-old children completed two tasks requiring memory for the location of a toy under one of four cups in an array of cups and landmarks after a 5 s delay and array rotation. Children first completed the baseline task with non-specific cues, followed by the cue-manipulation task with either language, visual, or non-specific cues provided by the experimenter. As in prior studies, language cues were most effective in facilitating recall. Children's visual attention was directed by both language and visual cues to support their recall. However, visual attention only partially mediated the effects of language: language supported recall above and beyond directing visual attention. These results indicate that visual attention supports spatial recall, but language has additional unique influences. This may result from language providing a more coherent or redundant code to visual information, or due to the pragmatic nature of language cueing relevance in ways visual cues do not. Additionally, differences across conditions may reflect more benefit from endogenous versus exogenous attentional control. Through using eye-tracking, this research provided new insights into processes by which language and visual attention influence children's spatial cognition.