Puzzles and board games enhance child’s spatial reasoning

New research shows that some games can help a child develop important cognitive skills.

Using data from a nationally representative study, researchers from Rhodes College determined that children who play frequently with puzzles, blocks, and board games tend to have better spatial reasoning ability.

The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Being able to reason about space, and how to manipulate objects in space, is a critical part of everyday life. The skill set helps us to navigate a busy street, put together a piece of “some assembly required” furniture, even load the dishwasher.

Moreover, the skills are especially important for success in academic domains including science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Graduates in STEM fields are usually viewed as professionals and are highly employable.

When the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI), a commonly used test of cognitive ability, was revised and standardized, it provided Jirout and co-author Dr. Nora Newcombe of Temple University a golden opportunity to study children’s spatial play and spatial thinking.

Jirout and Newcombe analyzed data from 847 children, ages four to seven, who had taken the revised WPPSI, which included measures of cognitive skills that contribute to general intelligence.

The children’s spatial ability was specifically measured via the commonly-used Block Design subtest of the WPPSI, in which children are asked to reproduce specific 2D designs using cubes that have red, white, and half-red/half-white faces. The researchers also examined survey data from parents about the children’s play behavior and joint parent-child activities.

Researchers discovered that family socioeconomic status, gender, and general intelligence scores were all associated with children’s performance on the block design task.

Children from the low-socioeconomic status group tended to have lower block design scores compared to children from either the middle- or high-socioeconomic status groups. And boys tended to have higher block design scores than did girls, though only after several other cognitive abilities, such as vocabulary, working memory, and processing speed were taken into account.

Importantly, how often children played with certain toys was also tied to their spatial reasoning skills. Children who played with puzzles, blocks, and board games often (more than six times per week) had higher block design scores than did children who played with them sometimes (three to five times per week), or rarely/never.

None of the other types of play (e.g., drawing, playing with noise-making toys, and riding a bicycle, skateboard, or scooter) or the parent-child activities (e.g., teaching number skills, teaching shapes, playing math games, telling stories) included in the survey data were associated with children’s spatial ability.

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