The Impact of Individual Differences, Types of Model and Social Settings on Block Building Performance among Chinese Preschoolers

Abstract

Children’s block building performances are used as indicators of other abilities in multiple domains. In the current study, we examined individual differences, types of model and social settings as influences on children’s block building performance. Chinese preschoolers (N = 180) participated in a block building activity in a natural setting, and performance was assessed with multiple measures in order to identify a range of specific skills. Using scores generated across these measures, three dependent variables were analyzed: block building skills, structural balance and structural features. An overall MANOVA showed that there were significant main effects of gender and grade level across most measures. Types of model showed no significant effect in children’s block building. There was a significant main effect of social settings on structural features, with the best performance in the 5-member group, followed by individual and then the 10-member block building. These findings suggest that boys performed better than girls in block building activity. Block building performance increased significantly from 1st to 2nd year of preschool, but not from second to third. The preschoolers created more representational constructions when presented with a model made of wooden rather than with a picture. There was partial evidence that children performed better when working with peers in a small group than when working alone or working in a large group. It is suggested that future study should examine other modalities rather than the visual one, diversify the samples and adopt a longitudinal investigation.

The Development of Spatial Representation Through Teaching Block-Building in Kindergartners

“…It turned out that there was no significant gender difference in neither the overall nor the three sub-forms of children’s spatial representations, which were consistent with the previous result in spatial ability, such as Hanline et al (2001) . However, as noted earlier, studies had reported that boys had advantages over girls in spatial ability (e.g., Tian et al, 2018 ), which might be regarded as contradictory to the finding of this study. We suspected that this was possible because boys and girls had equal opportunities to play with blocks and were very interested in block-building due to this gamified intervention.…”

“…Among these factors, gender is one of the most frequently mentioned variables (e.g., Casey et al, 2008 ; Jirout and Newcombe, 2015 ). Some scholars have reported that boys usually outperform girls on some spatial tasks (e.g., Casey et al, 1995 ), and are better at mastering building skills and understanding the structure balance with blocks ( Tian et al, 2018 ). However, there are also inconsistent findings regarding this gender difference.…”

The Use of a Novel Term Helps Preschoolers Learn the Concept of Angle: An Intervention Study With Chinese Preschool Children

“…According to that model, young children use a holistic processing approach to understanding angles and do not focus on separate dimensions such as angle size and side length. It is worth noting that our study did not find gender differences in Chinese preschooler's angle misconception, which is consistent with some of the previous studies about children's spatial reasoning (e.g., Spelke et al, 2011), but not others (Spelke, 2005;Davies and Uttal, 2007;Halpern et al, 2007;Tzuriel and Egozi, 2010;Tian et al, 2018). Future research needs to investigate the conditions under which gender differences in children's geometry cognition and spatial reasoning occur.…”

“…On the other hand, the fact that both labels still include the word "angle" may not help children to learn the concept of angle. Third, previous studies have found significant gender differences in children's geometric and spatial cognition (Spelke, 2005;Davies and Uttal, 2007;Halpern et al, 2007;Tzuriel and Egozi, 2010;Tian et al, 2018). Gender difference was not examined in Gibson et al's study, perhaps due to its limited sample size (N = 30).…”

Spatial Skills Associated With Block-Building Complexity in Preschoolers

“…Some research showed no significant gender difference in the complexity of block building (Hanline et al, 2001;Verdine et al, 2014b), but girls tended to build more house features, such as walls, windows, and doors, than did boys (Ramani et al, 2014). Other researchers, however, revealed that boys outperformed girls in block-building skills in China (Tian et al, 2018).…”