*The Effect of Language Experience on Spatial Relations*. A prerecorded presentation can be found by clicking on the following link:
<https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-4muYm13oquk47923nxSp0uq6O7f2pL7?usp=sharing>.
Abstract Text: Young children can perceptually differentiate spatial
relations (i.e., where objects lie in relation to each other). Although the
comprehension of spatial relations is facilitated by labels, such as
prepositions, spatial categories differ cross-linguistically. For example,
to express relations of containment and support, English uses "in" and
"on" respectively. In contrast, Spanish categorizes these relations
broadly such that "en" refers to both containment and support relations,
and Korean categorizes containment narrowly such that "kkita" and
"nehta" refer to objects fitting tightly or loosely. The present study
examines how children learn new labels for known spatial categories. Five
and 6-year-old English monolinguals saw videos of real-world objects shown
in relation to each other. In the first condition, children first learned
novel broad spatial categories (e.g., "en"), then they learned and were
tested on narrow categories (e.g., "kkita"). In the second condition, the
order switched such that children learned the narrow categories followed by
the broad ones. Results will inform our understanding of the role that
language experience plays in learning spatial relations.
