Relations between children's spatial language and spatial skills raise questions regarding whether the effects are unique to language or reflect non-linguistic processes. Different paradigms provided mixed evidence: experimenter-provided language supports spatial performance more than visual cues; however, children's non-verbal attention predicts their spatial performance more than their language production. The current study used eye-tracking during spatial recall to compare effects of language versus visual cues. Four- to five-year-old children completed two tasks requiring memory for the location of a toy under one of four cups in an array of cups and landmarks after a 5 s delay and array rotation. Children first completed the baseline task with non-specific cues, followed by the cue-manipulation task with either language, visual, or non-specific cues provided by the experimenter. As in prior studies, language cues were most effective in facilitating recall. Children's visual attention was directed by both language and visual cues to support their recall. However, visual attention only partially mediated the effects of language: language supported recall above and beyond directing visual attention. These results indicate that visual attention supports spatial recall, but language has additional unique influences. This may result from language providing a more coherent or redundant code to visual information, or due to the pragmatic nature of language cueing relevance in ways visual cues do not. Additionally, differences across conditions may reflect more benefit from endogenous versus exogenous attentional control. Through using eye-tracking, this research provided new insights into processes by which language and visual attention influence children's spatial cognition.

中文翻译：

---

使用眼动追踪了解儿童空间技能中视觉注意力和语言之间的关系

儿童空间语言和空间技能之间的关系引发了关于这种影响是语言独有的还是反映了非语言过程的问题。不同的范式提供了混合的证据：实验者提供的语言比视觉线索更能支持空间表现；然而，儿童的非语言注意力比语言生产更能预测他​​们的空间表现。目前的研究在空间回忆期间使用眼动追踪来比较语言与视觉线索的效果。4 到 5 岁的儿童完成了两项需要记忆的任务，即在 5 秒延迟和阵列旋转后，在一系列杯子和地标中四个杯子中的一个下面的玩具的位置。儿童首先用非特定线索完成基线任务，然后用语言、视觉、或实验者提供的非特定线索。与之前的研究一样，语言线索在促进回忆方面最有效。儿童的视觉注意力由语言和视觉线索引导，以支持他们的回忆。然而，视觉注意力只是部分地调节了语言的影响：语言支持的回忆超越了视觉注意力的引导。这些结果表明视觉注意力支持空间回忆，但语言有额外的独特影响。这可能是由于语言为视觉信息提供了更连贯或冗余的代码，或者由于语言提示相关性的实用性质，而视觉提示则没有。此外，条件之间的差异可能反映了内源性与外源性注意力控制的更多好处。通过使用眼动追踪，