The Development of Infants' Spatial Categories

Abstract

Early theories of how infants develop spatial concepts focused on the perceptual and cognitive abilities that contribute to this ability. More recent research, however, has centered on whether experience with spatial language might also play a role. The present article reviews how infants learn to form spatial categories, outlining the perceptual and cognitive abilities that drive this learning, and examines the role played by spatial language. I argue that infants' spatial concepts initially are the result of nonlinguistic perceptual and cognitive abilities, but that, as infants build a spatial lexicon, spatial language becomes an important tool in the spatial categories infants learn to form.