Spatial and temporal systems in child language and thought: a cross-linguistic study

This research was designed to evaluate the interaction of conceptual and linguistic factors during the acquisition of the spatial and temporal systems of Polish, English and Finnish from 3 to 6 years of age. In the conceptual-spatial task, children reconstructed a layout from a 180-degree change in perspective, and in the conceptual-temporal task they arranged three picture cards in a sequence while telling a story. In the linguistic domain, there were two comprehension tests and one production test containing spatial and temporal contrasts requiring either a single or multiple referent object(s)/event(s). The main effects (i.e., age, dimension, complexity) were always significant. There w…