Exploring the Development of Spatial Orientation and the Cognitive Levels of Preschoolers During “Three-stage” Constructive Play

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-5042852/v1

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Exploring the Development of Spatial Orientation and the Cognitive Levels of Preschoolers During “Three-stage” Constructive Play

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-5042852/v1

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Spatial orientation cognition is a crucial indicator of individual cognitive ability. The preschool period is a critical phase for nurturing children's spatial ability, and interventions are required to enhance preschoolers' level of spatial orientation cognition. This study designed a constructive play divided into three stages: orientation play, task-based play, and competitive play, which aimed to gradually enhance children's core experiences in perceived orientation, spatial language, and visual imagery. The study selected 110 children aged 5-6-year-old from a public kindergarten, randomly divided into an experimental group (N=55) and a control group (N=55). The experimental group received eight weeks of constructive play teaching, while the control group participated in regular teaching activities. The results showed that both the experimental and control groups significantly improved in seven dimensions of spatial orientation cognition, but the improvement and the extent of improvement were more significant in the experimental group. It indicates that the constructive play design of this study can effectively enhance the spatial orientation cognitive level of 5-6-year-old children, and the conventional teaching plays a role, some of which are the result of natural development. The present findings shows that preschool teachers should intervene in children's spatial orientation cognition as early as possible, pay attention to individual differences among children when nurturing their spatial abilities, and fully leverage the advantages of constructive play.

Psychology

Spatial Orientation

Spatial Cognitive

Constructive Play

Preschooler

Spatial orientation is among the essential abilities for an individual, reflecting not just cognitive development but also the holistic and integrative nature of early childhood growth. For young children, the initial recognition of spatial orientations not only promotes the development of spatial perception but also enhances their ability to solve everyday problems. Numerous studies have already confirmed the importance of early spatial abilities, linking the development of early spatial thinking to numerical skills(Cornu et al., 2018; Fanari et al., 2019; Levine et al., 2016; Zhang, 2016), mathematical reasoning (Casey et al., 2015), early writing skills (Bourke et al., 2014), motor skills (Jansen & Heil, 2010), and executive functions (Frick & Baumeler, 2017; Lehmann et al., 2014). Researchers have found that the preschool period is a crucial phase for the establishment of brain neural circuits. Heckman (2006) suggests that attention should be given to children's spatial orientation cognition abilities during this stage, as guidance and education are most effective at this time. Providing children with ample activity time and space during the preschool phase enables them to develop spatial experiences through activities. In this process, a plethora of spatial experiences can repeatedly stimulate the brain's neural circuits associated with spatial abilities, forming the physiological basis for their spatial intelligence activities (Heckman, 2006). Furthermore, Heckman and Masterov (2007) also discovered that early intervention for young children is more effective than interventions at a later stage.

Past researchers have found that spatial abilities play a significant predictive role in the education of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects and the selection of future careers (Lubinski, 2010; Stieff & Uttal, 2015; Uttal & Cohen, 2012; Wai et al., 2009). Good spatial abilities lay the foundation for an individual's creative potential across multiple domains. For instance, in architectural design, constructing spatial models requires good spatial skills. In artistic creation, setting up a scene composition also necessitates an individual's correct understanding and application of spatial relationships, such as perspective and occlusion. Hence, enhancing spatial abilities is an important agenda in educational research and practice (Hawes et al., 2017). In recent years, domestic demands for developing spatial abilities have changed, shifting from focusing primarily on children's naming and correct recognition of geometric figures in space to more emphasis on the cultivation of young children's application abilities in spatial cognition, requiring them to use spatial concepts more flexibly. In 2012, a guideline for learning and development of children aged 3 ~ 6 years old issued by China (hereinafter referred to as the Guideline) explicitly state that young children should be able to "perceive the basic spatial position and orientation of objects, understand directional words such as up, down, front, back, inside, outside" and "use directional words like up, down, front, back, inside, outside, middle, besides to describe the position and movement direction of objects". In summary, enhancing children's spatial abilities during the preschool education stage seems particularly important and necessary, and guiding and educating children in spatial abilities align with the laws of their physical and mental development.

Although the development of spatial abilities is constrained by innate factors, related research has demonstrated that most spatial abilities exhibit a moderate to high degree of plasticity (Uttal et al., 2013; Yang et al., 2020), indicating that spatial abilities can be improved through postnatal training.

According to Piaget's theory of cognitive development, preschool children are in the preoperational stage, where their thinking is characterized by its imagistic nature. Spatial orientation concepts, which are highly structured and logical, present a certain level of abstraction for young children, making them somewhat challenging to master. Research on children's spatial abilities abroad has focused on exploring its constituent factors (Linn & Petersen, 1985; McGee, 1979), integrating it with future education and learning in STEM fields (Stieff & Uttal, 2015; Wai et al., 2009), and advocating for the cultivation and shaping of children's spatial abilities (Uttal et al., 2013; Yang et al., 2020). However, research on children's spatial ability in China started relatively late and has been more concentrated on the development of early spatial representation abilities (Pang et al., 2008), the relationship between spatial ability and mathematics learning, as well as other cognitive abilities (Xie et al., 2020).

Play is a fundamental activity in kindergartens and an effective way to develop young children's potential. Due to their young age, children's attention can be easily diverted, hence daily learning activities are often conducted in the form of play. The Guideline also indicate that young children's learning of concepts such as numbers, shapes, and space is gradually acquired through life and play. It is through playing games that children directly perceive, practically operate, and personally experience to acquire knowledge. Constructive play, characterized by its intuitiveness and operability, can provide children with numerous learning opportunities. In constructive play, children can thoroughly explore space and directly, concretely perceive and experience abstract spatial relationships.

Research has shown that constructive play, such as LEGO (Wolfgang et al., 2003), building blocks (Casey et al., 2008), and puzzles (Levine et al., 2012), has a significant impact on spatial abilities. Evidence suggests that the more frequently children play with LEGO toys, the more improvement in their spatial ability (Brosnan, 1998; Wolfgang et al., 2003). Beyond LEGO, block play is also positively correlated with spatial abilities. Casey et al. (2008) utilized block building to improve the spatial ability of 6-year-old children. They found that storytelling could provide a practical and useful context for teaching spatial content, while block building could develop various spatial skills in children. Studies by Ribeiro et al. (2020) and Thomson et al. (2020) also found that parental support for spatial concepts and the use of spatial language in block tasks or toy play scenarios could enhance young children's mathematics scores. Additionally, puzzle play can also be utilized to shape children's spatial abilities. Research by Levine et al. (2012) indicates that the frequency of playing puzzle play contributes to the development of spatial ability.

However, those constructive play tend to have a rather uniform format and lack interactivity, which might lead to children losing interest after playing multiple times. Therefore, when selecting and designing spatial training play, it is essential to consider whether young children can engage in them continuously and over the long term. Additionally, there are certain patterns in young children's cognition of spatial orientation, characterized by a transition from egocentric to allocentric perspectives (Neidhardt & Popp, 2010; Opfer et al., 2010), and the acquisition order of orientation is first up-down, then front-back, and finally left-right (Yeh & Fang, 1958). Furthermore, there is a learning process that extends from near to far spatial ranges. Young children tend to have better spatial discrimination for objects within a narrow space close to their bodies and oriented towards them, but they may experience difficulties in judging the spatial position of slightly skewed objects or objects farther away from them. Therefore, play aimed at enhancing young children's spatial abilities should follow the patterns of their spatial orientation cognition, progressing step by step and evolving in stages. Research by Cheng and Liu (2020) designed a systematic constructive play divided into three stages to cultivate children's spatial relationship experiences: basic construction skill training activities, independent construction skill training activities, and cooperative construction skill training activities. The results show that young children’s spatial relations overall are on the rise, perception of spatial relations between objects to construct behavior increased gradually, and the frequency of using the concept of spatial orientation increased significantly. Unfortunately, the study ultimately selected only 2 children for a case study, and whether its conclusions can be generalized to the broader population requires further investigation.

Spatial orientation cognition is a crucial component of spatial abilities in young children. Its development is not instantaneous but rather gradual and stepwise. According to the developmental laws of children's spatial orientation cognition, the design of play should follow the principles of progressing from easy to difficult, from simple to complex, and from concrete to abstract. Moreover, the Guideline suggest that the core experiences in spatial orientation for 5-6-year-old children in the mathematical domain are divided into perceived orientation, spatial language, and visual imagery. "Perceived orientation" refers to children's ability to perceive the relative positions of objects in the spatial environment. "Spatial language" refers to children's ability to use directional words to describe directions and positions. "Visual imagery" refers to the shapes and images formed in children's minds, which help them clearly express and manipulate directions and positions. Therefore, this study designed a systematic series of spatial orientation play, divided into orientation play, task-based play, and competitive play, aimed at gradually improving young children's understanding and cognition of spatial orientation (see Fig. 1). During the play, children are required to use sensory channels such as vision, hearing, and touch to observe and remember objects, paths, and landmarks in the environment, and to find target locations or complete specific tasks within a set time. In summary, this study aimed to explore the effectiveness of a constructive play design in enhancing the spatial orientation cognitive levels of 5-6-year-old children.

Participants

In this study, a random sampling method was used to recruit two classes out of 13 parallel classes from a public kindergarten, totaling 110 students. These two classes were taught by different teachers, which minimized potential biases and ensured the representativeness of the sample. The participants ranged in age from 5 to 6 years (M = 5.46, SD = 0.50), with males accounting for 47.60%. The participants were randomly divided into experimental and control groups, each consisting of 55 individuals, with a roughly balanced gender ratio.

Material and Measurement

The Design of Constructive Play

Based on the developmental patterns of spatial orientation cognition in early childhood, this study devised a series of spatial orientation play termed the “three-stage” spatial orientation play. The “three-stage” play is designed to simulate real-life scenarios aimed at helping children in perceiving positional relationships between objects. It consists of orientation play, task-based play, and competitive play, progressively increasing in complexity to enhance children's understanding and cognitive abilities regarding spatial orientation. Within the “three-stage” play, children participate in scenario-based activities to explore the relationships between objects and attempt to manipulate toy soldiers to navigate through each scenario. Concurrently, children learn and apply spatial concepts to describe the relative positions of objects within these scenarios. Through this process, children's gaming proficiency gradually improves, fostering the development of higher levels of spatial orientation cognition.

The first phase of the play, termed the orientation play, lasted for a duration of 2 weeks. The orientation play aimed at fostering foundational construction skills in children while concurrently developing their independent spatial relational experiences. It guided children in understanding and applying relatively simple spatial orientation concepts. During this phase, a total of four activities were conducted, including physical training, team drill, marching drill, and traversal drill (see Table 1). The difficulty levels of these activities gradually increased in line with the intended developmental construction skills, and they were interconnected. Throughout this play, researchers utilized methods such as picture books and videos to introduce play rules to children and guide them in constructing appropriate scenarios within the play. Additionally, by imparting elementary spatial orientation concepts, children were enabled to understand and use these terminologies in soldier skill-training play.

Through orientation play, children can comprehend and apply relatively simple spatial orientation concepts. However, they may struggle with abstract spatial concepts, often resorting to terms like “this side” or “that side”, and may also confuse certain spatial orientation concepts, such as “outside” and “beside”. Hence, the primary objective of the second phase activities is to guide children in understanding and employing more complex spatial orientation concepts, thereby fostering the development of their integrated spatial relational experiences. This phase's play is conducted in the form of tasks, comprising both single tasks and combination tasks, totaling three activities, with one single task and two combination tasks (see Table 1). Prior to commencing the play, researchers engage in discussions with children about how the play should proceed, refining and optimize the children's questions based on the discussion content and play objectives. Throughout the play, researchers continuously observe children's play and address any issues encountered by children after they finish playing. The duration of this phase's play spans three weeks.

In the previous phase's composite task play, children demonstrated the ability to accomplish tasks through mutual communication. Consequently, the third phase unfolds in a cooperative format, aiming to enhance children's collaborative construction capabilities. Due to children's ongoing inability to differentiate between their left and right hands, coupled with inherent challenges in self-centered identification of object left-right orientations, this phase necessitates fostering children's perception and description of object left-right spatial relationships with themselves as the reference point. Simultaneously, through integration with other spatial relational experiences, systematic promotion of children's spatial orientation experiences is essential. Activities in this phase predominantly encompass physical confrontation and descriptive confrontation, carried out twice, with play procedures and duration similar to those of task-based play (see Table 1).

Table 1

*Specific Design of "Three-stage" Constructive Play*
Play Category	Play Classification	Play Mode	Spatial Orientation Experiences
Orientation Play	Physical Training	Children manipulate the special forces soldiers to jump up, jump down.	Up and Down
	Team Drill	Children manipulate the special forces soldiers to move forward, move backward.	Front and Back
	Marching Drill	Children manipulate the special forces soldiers to turn left, turn right.	Left and Right
	Traversal Drill	Children manipulate the special forces soldiers to pass through the middle of the bridge, through the cave.	Middle
Task-based Play	Simulated Combat (Single Task)	Children manipulate soldiers and use spatial language to describe the walking route: “You follow behind, we pass through the middle of the bridge, go around behind the big rock, then pass through the small forest...”	Beside, Adjacent, Pass through, Front and back, Inside and outside
	Combat Exercises (Combination Task)	Soldiers are required to evacuate in an orderly manner and withdraw from the nearest safe entrance/exit.	Inside and outside, Together, Beside, Middle, Enter, Pass through
	Combat Exercises (Combination Task)	Search for combat tools and report live from each location searched, including how to find the equipment, such as: “I found a rifle under the bridge arch, I found a rifle behind the tree...”	Inside and outside, Near and far, Beside, Enter, Pass through, Left and right
Competitive play	Luring the Enemy Deeper (Physical Confrontation)	Both sides pretest select the battlefield in advance. During the engagement, they retreat to their respective camps, placing their own side in a position of initiative. They observe the weaknesses of the enemy and seek opportunities to launch attacks.	Top, Beside, Together, Enter, Left and right, High place, Inside and outside, Come out, Front and back, Middle
Competitive play	Strategic Counteroffensive (Descriptive Confrontation)	During continuous combat, it is advisable to preserve troop strength. Employing deception tactics can mislead the enemy, allowing for a concentrated Counteroffensive when the enemy's guard is down.	Highest point, Front and back, Inside and outside, Middle, Go through, Middle, Together, Left and right
Note. The table shows the specific design of the constructive play in this study, including the play category, classification, mode, and the spatial orientation experiences to be developed.

The “three-stage” play utilizes daily life and storytelling as its framework, establishing a relaxed and enjoyable learning atmosphere through the introduction of gaming scenarios. This design helps children immerse themselves in a gaming learning environment, stimulating their interest in spatial orientation play and facilitating their understanding of spatial orientation concepts, thereby further developing their spatial orientation experiences.

To ensure the smooth progression of the experiment, various desktop construction materials were utilized during the gaming process, such as LEGO blocks, snowflakes, and magnetic tiles, along with props like soldiers and toy guns. According to the play requirements, children could craft their weapons or tents in the woodworking and art areas, enabling them to unleash their imagination and creativity, and experience the joy of combat during the play. Additionally, the study offered plenty of gaming time for children, who could independently select their gaming sessions independently according to their interests. This included three time slots: morning arrival time (7:30 − 8:10), regional gaming time (10:30 − 11:00), and post-lunch activity time (11:30 − 12:00).

Furthermore, to cultivate children's ability for independent thinking and to better apply the spatial orientation experiences learned to daily life, solving practical problems, this study incorporated three stages: "verbal," "visual," and "practical," before and after the play.

“Verbal” Orientation: Communicative Expression. Before the play begins, children can develop an understanding of spatial relationships in their daily lives through mutual communication. They can discuss differences in the positions and orientations of objects and understand spatial and directional concepts through independent exploration. After the play, various forms of conversational activities, such as self-expression, group discussions, and teacher-child dialogues, can be utilized to enable children to share their gaming experiences, including camp layouts and rescuing small animals. Through communication and dialogue, children can better grasp spatial concepts and enhance their application abilities.

“Visual” Orientation: Symbolic Representation. Before the play starts, children can use symbols to express their ideas and plans. They can design a plan called the "Tripartite Play," which includes physical training and route planning. Through these activities, children can gradually comprehend the direction indicated by arrows and their significance, seamlessly incorporating spatial orientation concepts into their play.

“Practical” Orientation: Problem Solving. This stage aims to cultivate children's problem-solving abilities. For example, using spatial orientation concepts to draw maps and hide treasure locations helps children comprehend the significance of different symbols on the scene plan and find the locations marked on the map in real-life settings. During this stage, children can better solve real-life problems by applying spatial orientation knowledge acquired during play.

Measurement

This study utilized the “Bracken Basic Concept Scale (Revised)” to conduct a pretest on children's level of spatial relational experience. This scale is an important assessment tool for evaluating the developmental level of basic concepts in preschool children (aged 2 years 6 months to 7 years 11 months), comprising 11 key cognitive concept tests. The scale demonstrates high reliability and validity, with an average test-retest reliability ranging from 0.78 to 0.88 and individual test reliabilities ranging from 0.78 to 0.98. The overall scale reliability ranges from 0.96 to 0.99(Bracken, 1998). Subtest 6 of the scale primarily examines children's cognition of the relative positions between objects, including their understanding of the position of an object relative to themselves or relative to another object. The evaluation content aligns with the content of this study, focusing on the seven dimensions of vertical direction, horizontal direction, inward-outward direction, dynamic direction, relative distance, specific area, and spatial common sense.

Procedure

The experiment comprised three stages: (1) Before the formal start of the experiment, participants underwent a pretest on spatial orientation cognitive level; (2) During the experiment, the experimental group took part in "Tripartite" play activities designed to improve spatial orientation cognitive level, while the control group engaged in standard educational activities for a total of 8 weeks; (3) After the teaching period ended, participants were given a posttest on spatial orientation cognitive level, conducted by specialized group teachers. To ensure the accuracy of measurement results, identical questionnaires were used for both pretest and posttest assessments.

Statistical Analyses

Statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS version 25 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY, USA). First, to examine the effectiveness of the “three-stage” play, we compared the differences in spatial orientation cognitive levels between the experimental and control groups before and after the intervention using independent samples t-tests. To investigate the influence of spatial orientation play on children of varying ages and genders, we considered group and age as between-group variables and analyzed the posttest scores of both the experimental and control groups. We employed a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to test these differences.

Descriptive statistics were conducted on the spatial orientation cognitive level of all 110 participants across seven dimensions. It was observed that the participant group performed at moderate to slightly below moderate levels across these seven dimensions. Furthermore, when participants were stratified by gender, it was noted that girls had slightly higher mean scores across all seven dimensions compared to boys, although these differences were not statistically significant. Similarly, when participants were stratified by age, it was observed that preschool children aged 6 had slightly higher mean scores across all seven dimensions compared to those aged 5. This difference in scores may be attributed to age-related development, yet statistically, no significant differences were observed (see Appendix Fig. 2).

Using the pretest data from the “Bracken Basic Concept Scale (Revised)” as the dependent variable for both the experimental and control groups, independent samples t-tests were conducted on the data of two groups. The data analysis results revealed that, except for the dimension of spatial common sense, where the experimental group (M = 3.03, SD = 0.99) significantly exceeded the control group (M = 2.59, SD = 0.80) with p = .013, no significant differences were observed in other dimensions, overall means, or pretest total scores (see Appendix Table 2).

Using the pretest and posttest data of the experimental group in the “Bracken Basic Concept Scale (Revised)” as the dependent variable, paired-sample t-tests were conducted on the data of both groups. The data analysis results showed that after participating in spatial orientation play teaching activities, the experimental group experienced a significant improvement in all seven dimensions, overall Mean values, and total scores of spatial orientation cognitive level (see Fig. 3).

Using the pretest and posttest data of the control group in the “Bracken Basic Concept Scale (Revised)” as the dependent variable, paired-sample t-tests were conducted on the data of both groups. The data analysis results showed that after undergoing regular teaching activities, the control group experienced a significant improvement in all seven dimensions, overall Mean values, and total scores of spatial orientation cognitive level (see Fig. 4).

Using the posttest data of the experimental group and the control group in the “Bracken Basic Concept Scale (Revised)” as the dependent variable, independent-sample t-tests were conducted on the data of both groups. The data analysis results revealed that the spatial orientation cognitive level of the experimental group, in terms of all seven dimensions, overall Mean values, and posttest total scores, was significantly higher than that of the control group (see Fig. 5). Combining the data from Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, it can be observed that both spatial orientation play teaching and regular teaching activities significantly improved the spatial orientation cognitive level of the participants. However, spatial orientation play in teaching had a better effect on enhancing the spatial orientation ability of preschool children.

To further investigate the effects of spatial orientation play on children of different ages and genders, a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted with group and age as between-subject factors, using the posttest data from the “Bracken Basic Concept Scale (Revised)” as the dependent variable. The results revealed a significant main effect of the group, with p-values < .001 for all seven dimensions. Children who participated in spatial orientation play activities showed better development in spatial cognitive abilities compared to those engaged in traditional teaching activities. The main effect of age was not significant (p > .05). Additionally, the interaction effect between group and age was not significant. As shown in Appendix Table 3, under experimental conditions, children aged 6 scored higher than those aged 5 on all seven dimensions of spatial orientation. However, under controlled conditions, the scores of 6-year-olds were lower than those of 5-year-olds, although there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups, as shown in Appendix Table 4.

Using group and gender as between-group variables, a two-factor between-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted with the posttest scores from the “Bracken Basic Concept Scale (Revised)” as the dependent variable. The results revealed a significant main effect for the group (p < .001), indicating that children who underwent the spatial orientation play intervention performed significantly better than those in the control group. However, there was no significant main effect for gender (p > .05), nor was there a significant interaction effect between group and gender. As shown in Appendix Table 5, girls scored higher than boys in both the experimental and control groups, although the difference was not statistically significant according to Appendix Table 6.

Through systematic cultivation via three stages of constructive play, this study has discovered:

Firstly, there is a natural maturation phenomenon in young children's spatial orientation cognition. Ellis (1990) noted that "children's cognition of spatial orientation is a strategic cognition, which, as children age and become more familiar with spatial relationships, can gradually transform into an automatic encoding process." Research by Levine et al. (2012) provided insights into how children learn and internalize spatial concepts through everyday activities and interactions, supporting the theory of the transformation of spatial orientation cognition from strategic cognition to an automatic encoding process. The meta-analysis by Uttal et al. (2013) not only emphasized the importance of early spatial training but also showed that with the accumulation of experience, the enhancement of spatial orientation cognition abilities could become more automated. The findings of Frick and Wang (2014) further supported the transition from active exploration to automated processing in children's spatial cognition with increased experience. These studies indicate that through continuous practice and accumulation of experience, young children's strategic cognition of spatial orientation can develop into a more automated process, thus supporting Ellis’s viewpoint. In this study, although the control group did not receive spatial orientation game teaching, they still experienced some improvement in their spatial orientation and cognitive levels after 8 weeks of regular teaching activities. Furthermore, the scores of 6-year-old children were slightly higher than those of 5-year-old subjects across various dimensions, even without significant differences. Therefore, the results of this study, like those of previous research, also support Ellis’s perspective.

Secondly, the spatial orientation games designed in this study effectively improved young children's cognitive levels related to spatial orientation. Cheng and Liu (2020) believe that the implementation environment of constructive play, game themes, game materials, construction skills, and game forms all have a significant impact on young children's construction activities, thereby affecting the development of spatial relationship experiences. Kang et al. (2020) suggest that this phenomenon may occur because children interpret and process sensory information through actions and vision during the construction process, and enhance their skills in problem-solving, logical thinking, and understanding of concepts based on specific contexts. Therefore, in designing constructive play, this study incorporated stories and life situations to maximally engage children's interests. The subjects in the experimental group maintained high enthusiasm for constructive play throughout the process, and all completed the 8-week experiment. The experimental results showed that after 8 weeks of teaching activities, the spatial orientation cognitive levels of children in both the experimental and control groups had improved. However, the experimental group, which received spatial orientation game teaching, showed greater improvement across all dimensions compared to the control group. This indicates that the constructive play design of this study is effective, suggesting that spatial orientation games can enhance the spatial orientation cognitive levels of 5-6-year-old children.

Finally, no gender differences were found in the spatial orientation cognitive levels of the subjects in this study. Gender can influence the development of various abilities, and current research has shown significant gender differences in a variety of spatial tasks, with males generally demonstrating superior spatial abilities to females (Ehrlich et al., 2006; Levine et al., 1999; McGuinness & Morley, 1991). For instance, Levine et al. (1999) found that 4-and-a-half-year-old boys outperformed girls in completing two-dimensional spatial tasks requiring spatial transformations. However, after reviewing much of the literature on gender differences in spatial abilities, Frick and Wang (2014) concluded that gender differences in spatial abilities do not appear in the preschool period. Levine et al. (2016)investigated the role of gender differences in the development of spatial abilities and found that gender differences might not be significant in early developmental stages, but as age increases, differences begin to emerge, especially in tasks involving spatial rotation and navigation. The analysis results of this study also did not reveal gender differences in children's spatial orientation cognitive levels, possibly because the subjects were quite young and gender differences had not yet emerged, thereby supporting the latter viewpoint.

Educational Implications

From the perspective of educators, there are mainly three suggestions.

First, although the level of spatial orientation cognition improves with age, many studies have shown that early intervention has significant effects (Yang et al., 2020). Educators should begin as early as kindergarten, or even earlier, to cultivate children's spatial orientation cognition through specially designed games and activities. These activities can offer rich spatial experiences in an entertaining form, helping young children develop an intuitive understanding of spatial relationships.

Second, educators should fully leverage the advantages of constructive play and diversify the forms of these games. To enhance young children's spatial abilities, educators can provide various types of construction toys, such as blocks, puzzles, magnetic puzzles, threading toys, etc., allowing children to encounter different types of spatial concepts through play. Moreover, during play, educators must play a guiding role, leading children to engage in some simple spatial constructions, such as attempting to build simple houses, bridges, or other structures with blocks. By actively participating in construction, children can better understand spatial relationships and structures. For more complex constructive play, providing models or demonstrations for children to observe, imitate, and learn from can help them comprehend different spatial concepts, such as plane, three-dimensional, orientation, etc.

Third, educators need to be aware of the individual differences among young children and provide personalized instruction accordingly to meet their interests and developmental levels. They can assess children's spatial orientation cognitive levels by observing their performance in spatial games, drawing, solving directional problems, etc., in conjunction with the children's ages. Based on the assessment results, educators can choose different teaching methods and tools. For children with lower levels, intuitive perceptual activities can be used to help them understand and remember spatial concepts, such as through games, drawings, and physical objects; whereas for children with higher levels, abstract thinking training can be offered, providing them with more complex problems and challenges to further enhance their spatial orientation cognition abilities. Additionally, educators should regularly observe and assess the development of children's spatial orientation cognition to adjust teaching methods and content promptly. The use of appropriate assessment tools can help educators more accurately understand children's learning progress and make targeted educational decisions.

In addition to the aforementioned suggestions, parents can also be encouraged to engage in related activities at home, integrating spatial orientation concepts into young children's daily lives. By using spatial orientation vocabulary (up, down, left, right, front, back, etc.) in everyday conversations, children can learn and apply these concepts in practice. Furthermore, schools and families should maintain communication, and share effective educational strategies and resources.

Limitation and Future Directions

Several limitations of this study should be noted. First, this "three-stage" constructive play is developed based on the real life of children and the teaching experience of kindergarten teachers and may not strictly abide by the process and standards of game development. Second, the two groups are taught by different teachers, which may affect the experimental results. Third, it is a quasi-experiment. Events that occur during the study but outside of the experimental manipulation may affect the outcomes. For instance, children may play some spatial games at home, which is difficult for the experimenter to control. Lastly, this study did not employ a longitudinal design, hence it remains unknown whether the experimental group's subjects retained their improved levels of spatial orientation cognition several weeks or even months after the experiment concluded.

Future experiments could, firstly, broaden the age range of the children involved, and secondly, incorporate a longitudinal design. Such adjustments would not only make the results more universally applicable but also determine whether the spatial orientation games developed in this study have a long-term effect on enhancing children's spatial orientation cognitive levels. Secondly, researchers believe that the development of children's spatial abilities is closely linked to the development of their brain's neural networks. During activities, related neural circuits are repeatedly activated, and these circuits tend to persist and rapidly develop as children age. This study merely employed scales to measure the spatial orientation cognitive levels of young children, which is relatively simplistic as it only reveals outcomes without understanding the process. Future research could enhance its credibility by incorporating evidence from behavioral or cognitive neuroscience.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Institutional Review Board Statement: The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Psychology Research Ethics Committee of Ningbo University (IRB_A2022T120157, 18th March, 2022).

Informed Consent Statement: Informed consent was obtained from all participants and their parents included in the study; The authors promise that the data is available when required and will make our data available in an open repository as required.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Exploring the Development of Spatial Orientation and the Cognitive Levels of Preschoolers During “Three-stage” Constructive Play

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Constructive Play Improve Spatial Ability

The Present Study

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The Design of Constructive Play

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