Performance in everyday spatial orientation tasks (e.g., map reading and navigation) has been considered functionally separate from performance on more abstract object-based spatial abilities (e.g., mental rotation and visualization). However, few studies have examined the link between spatial orientation and object-based spatial skills, and even…

Learning to walk leads to an increase in language abilities; however, the underlying mechanisms accounting for this relation remain unclear. Investigating the quality of early gait control may offer some insights. The purpose of this study was to: (1) quantify how 13-month-olds (n = 39; 39% male) and 24-month-olds (n = 39; 59% male) adapt gait…

Spatial play in early childhood is associated with a variety of spatial and cognitive skills. However, these associations are often derived from studies in which different tasks are used across different age ranges, leaving open the question of how children's natural behaviors during spatial play develop from infancy into the early preschool…

This experiment examined how multiple planning constraints affect grasp posture planning in 6- to 10-year-old children (n = 16 in each group) by manipulating the intended object end-orientation (left end-down, right end-down) and initial precision demands (standard, initial precision) of a bar transport task. Results indicated that grasp posture…

Since their discovery in the early 1990s, mirror neurons have been proposed to be related to many social-communicative abilities, such as imitation. However, research into the early manifestations of the putative neural mirroring system and its role in early social development is still inconclusive. In the current EEG study, mu suppression,…

Studies on affordances typically focus on single objects. We investigated whether affordances are modulated by the context, defined by the relation between two objects and a hand. Participants were presented with pictures displaying two manipulable objects linked by a functional (knife-butter), a spatial (knife-coffee mug), or by no relation. They…

In order to better understand how to design hands-on child-computer interaction, we explore how different styles of interaction facilitate children's thinking while they use their hands to manipulate objects. We present an exploratory study of children solving a spatial puzzle task. We investigate how the affordances of physical, graphical…