Early locomotion and the development of spatial language: Evidence from young children with motor impairments

Abstract

Recent studies show that young children with type-2 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) can succeed in spatial search tasks. Such results suggest that locomotor impairment may not be a risk factor responsible for a dramatic slowing down or deviation in the development of spatial cognition. The present experiment pursues this question in relation to spatial language to determine whether self-produced locomotion is a necessary prerequisite for the normal acquisition of spatial terms. It compares how two groups of young French children (mean age 33 months) comprehend and produce spatial markers: one group of 12 type-2 SMA children and a control group of 12 healthy children. The results show no significant difference between the two groups with one exception: SMA children displayed a better performance when producing markers for the relations in front of and behind. The performance of SMA children suggests that, despite their total deprivation of experience in locomotion, they have the capacity to acquire and to use rich spatial representations that are embodied in the semantics of natural languages.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the French Ministry of Research within the project The categorization of spatial entities (Cognitique Program).

We thank the Association Française contre les Myopathies (AFM) for providing access to families with SMA children. We are especially grateful to the parents and children who participated in the study.

Notes

¹On average about 20 type-2 SMA children per year are available in France.

²Available markers of spatial relations in French differ with respect to their constraints on the explicit mention of reference objects. Some require such a mention (sur/sous/dans le lit“on/under/in the bed”), while others are typically used without it (e.g., dessus/dessous/dedans“on/under/in [it]”), or may be used either way (devant/derrière“in front of/behind [it]”). In some cases, explicit mention of grounds involves more complex forms (e.g., près/loin“near/far” vs. près de/loin de la maison“near the house/far from the house”, au-dessus/en-dessous“above/below [it]” vs. au-dessus de/en-dessous de la chaise “ above/below the chair”, en haut/en bas“in the upper/lower region [of it]” vs. en haut de/en bas de la porte“in the upper/lower region of the door”).