Few studies have examined the long-term relations between children's early spatial skills and their later mathematical abilities. In the current study, we investigated children's developmental trajectories of spatial skills across four waves from age 3–7 years and their association with children's later mathematical understanding. We assessed children's development in a large, heterogeneous sample of children (N = 586) from diverse cultural backgrounds and mostly low-income homes. Spatial and mathematical skills were measured using standardized assessments. Children's starting points and rate of growth in spatial skills were investigated using latent growth curve models. We explored the influence of various covariates on spatial skill development and found that socioeconomic status, language skills, and sex, but not migration background predicted children's spatial development. Furthermore, our findings showed that children's initial spatial skills––but not their rate of growth––predicted later mathematical understanding, indicating that early spatial reasoning may play a crucial role for learning mathematics.

很少有研究考察儿童早期空间技能与其后期数学能力之间的长期关系。在目前的研究中，我们调查了 3-7 岁儿童空间技能在四个波次中的发展轨迹及其与儿童后期数学理解的关联。我们在来自不同文化背景和主要是低收入家庭的大量异质儿童样本（N = 586）中评估了儿童的发展。使用标准化评估来衡量空间和数学技能。使用潜在增长曲线模型调查了儿童在空间技能方面的起点和增长速度。我们探索了各种协变量对空间技能发展的影响，发现社会经济地位、语言技能和性别，但不是迁移背景预测儿童的空间发展。此外，我们的研究结果表明，儿童最初的空间技能——而不是他们的增长速度——预测了后来的数学理解，表明早期的空间推理可能对学习数学起着至关重要的作用。