FIU researchers used eye-tracking technology to study how young children approached a mental rotation task. They discovered that children as young as 3 years old use the same reasoning strategies as adults to solve spatial puzzles. Most of the children mentally rotated the whole object rather than breaking it down into parts.
Those who used this strategy solved problems twice as fast as those that used a piecemeal approach. “Kids aren’t just absorbing information, they’re thinking critically and strategically much earlier than we used to believe,” says researcher Shannon Pruden. “And now we have the tools, and science, to help them thrive.” The team encourages caregivers to support these skills by providing early exposure to spatial experiences and using spatial words such as “under,” “around,” “bigger,” “farther,” and “corner.”
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