title: Parental guidance in preschoolers' understanding of spatial-graphic representations.
abstract: This research was designed to observe whether parents guide their children's understanding of spatial-graphic representations and, if so, to describe the quality of the strategies they use. Parents read a picture book to their preschoolers (3 or 5 years, N=31) and children completed spatial-graphic comprehension tasks. Observational data revealed a range of creative behaviors used to address the book's spatial-graphic challenges. The incidence and quality of parental spatial-graphic behaviors were significantly related to 5-year-old children's performance on spatial-graphic measures. These findings, as well as the paucity of parent attention to aesthetics or graphic production techniques, are discussed in relation to representational development and educational practice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 16802, USA.
authors.forename: Lisa E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Szechter
authors.forename: Lynn S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Liben
mesh_terms: D001878:Books, Illustrated; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003405:Creativity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011932:Reading; D012938:Social Perception; D013028:Space Perception; D014743:Videotape Recording