Young children's understanding of ordinal and spatial labels

The goal of this study was to understand the development of ordinal and spatial language during the preschool years. One hundred twenty-nine 3- and 4-year-old children searched for stickers in labeled train cars hidden from view by three identical tunnels. Children were randomly assigned to label condition, comparing ordinal (first, second, third), spatial (front, middle, back), and color labels (red, green, yellow). As expected, search performance improved significantly with age. Importantly, search performance was significantly lower for ordinal labels than for color labels (the control condition), with spatial labels intermediate and not different from the other two conditions. Positive correlations were found between search performance and parent reports of child language. These findings provide important details about developmental improvements in ordinal and spatial language during the preschool years.