![]() ![]() ![]() In this paper, we focus on how children engage in one form of digital spatial play, digital block play. Therefore, we must also examine how children play with these apps. Additionally, digital spatial play is also a culturally relevant part of young children’s everyday lives and is a growing context for children’s play ( Gee, 2003 Flynn et al., 2019). Early evidence suggests a positive association between children’s spatial skills and their digital spatial play ( Polinsky et al., 2021) and that these skills can be strengthened through children’s play on touchscreen devices ( Bower et al., 2021). Consequently, spatial games that were once reserved for children’s play with physical materials, such as blocks and puzzles, now occur on touchscreen devices in the form of digital spatial play. Ten years ago, touchscreens and tablets were novelties now they are nearly ubiquitous and are available for very young children ( Rideout, 2017). In recent years the opportunities for children’s spatial play have been transformed through the tremendous growth in digital apps. There is now substantial evidence that spatial play can contribute both to spatial development and to the development of relevant STEM skills (e.g., Gunderson et al., 2012). Moreover, the frequency of children’s spatial play is predictive of their spatial skills ( Levine et al., 2012 Verdine et al., 2014a Jirout and Newcombe, 2015). The opportunity for children to notice the spatial changes that they physically create promotes spatial thinking ( Wakefield et al., 2019). When children engage in spatial play, they often must rotate and rearrange toys, which results in visual changes to object orientations. Spatial play facilitates children’s spatial thinking and creates opportunities for them to practice their spatial skills. ![]() One experience that contributes to children’s spatial skill development is their spatial play, such as play with blocks, puzzles, and board games ( Caldera et al., 1999 Siegler and Ramani, 2008 Levine et al., 2012 Verdine et al., 2014c Jirout and Newcombe, 2015). Finally, there is emerging evidence (although still preliminary), including well-controlled experiments, that training spatial skills may lead to gains in STEM interest, achievement, and retention (e.g., Sorby et al., 2013 Cheng and Mix, 2014). Spatial skills also play a specific role in intellectual creativity in STEM ( Kell et al., 2013) and if and how STEM learners use external spatial representations, such as maps, models, diagrams, graphs, and sketches, during problem solving ( Uttal et al., 2013 Mix, 2019). The connection between spatial skills and mathematics potentially begins as early as infancy ( Gallistel and Gelman, 1992), perhaps due to a shared common neural code between space and number within the intraparietal sulcus ( McCrink and Opfer, 2014 Hawes and Ansari, 2020). For example, there is a strong association between spatial skills and mathematics performance, a critical foundation of many STEM topics (e.g., Lubinski and Benbow, 1992 Casey et al., 2008 Mix and Cheng, 2012 Verdine et al., 2014a, c). Spatial skills are important for STEM learning, even from a young age. The results are discussed in terms of potential ways to implement digital spatial play apps that might engage children’s spatial skills and support their spatial and STEM learning. The present work shows that digital block play supports play behaviors similar to those supported by physical blocks, but whether and how digital block play facilitates spatial learning is still unknown. However, children’s spatial skills were not associated with their play in the app. Children actively manipulated the digital blocks, and there were differences in their block play by age and gender. We developed a coding scheme that measured children’s play behaviors in the app, and reliably detected individual differences in this play. Children completed a spatial skills assessment and played a popular digital block play app, Toca Blocks. We asked how 3- to 6-year-old children ( N = 117) engaged in digital block play and whether children’s age, gender, and spatial skills were correlated with this play. A growing genre of spatial play for young children is digital block play. Spatial play contributes to children’s early development of spatial skills, which are foundational for STEM achievement. ![]()
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