Mert Kobaş

Thank you so much!

I am so excited to be a part of this wonderful paper led by the very talented @mkobas.bsky.social and my fav collaborator @tilbegoksun.bsky.social. I am generally a big fan of beautiful descriptive statistics and Mert did an amazing job in this paper! Enjoy!

Teşekkür ederim Akira hocam 😊

Spatial language development in preterm and full-term infants: The role of object exploration and parents’ spatial input Infants learn object features and relations among objects by exploring them. Object exploration and parents’ verbal input related to these spatial cha…

Proud to share this work from my time in Koç University Language & Cognition Lab.
Read the full paper here: sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
We hope it contributes to better understanding early spatial language development pathways.
#devpsycsky

This work highlights the importance of parents' spatial input during infants’ early object exploration for early spatial language development especially for populations like preterm infants who may receive less of it.

A figure represents the relation between the interaction term and spatial language at Time 2.

We also found that infants who both explored more and received more spatial language input had stronger spatial vocabularies later on.
This suggests a cascading developmental effect shaped by early experiences.

Importantly, the interaction between object exploration and spatial input at 14 months predicted spatial language at 26 months regardless of whether infants were born preterm or full-term.

Two figures that represent temporal distribution of object exploration events with co-occurrences Top figure shows the timelines for each preterm infant’s object exploration events. Different colors represent different action types: holding, inspective actions, mouthing and rhytmic actions. Co-occurences are represented by framed boxes. The bottom figure represents timelines for each full-term infant’s object exploration events. Different colors represent different action types: holding, inspective actions, mouthing and rhytmic actions. Co-occurences are represented by framed boxes.

On average, spatial input co-occurred with 44% of object exploration events.
This co-occurrence differed by group:
-Preterm: 36.1%
-Full-term: 52.1%

Two figures. The top figure shows total object exploration duration (seconds) -on y axis- by neonatal condition -on x axis-. The bottom figure shows parents' spatial input (tokens) -on y axis- by neonatal condition -on x axis. Each dot represents a data point. The means are represented by the black lines.

We found that preterm and full-term infants showed similar levels of object exploration.
However, parents of preterm infants used significantly less spatial language during play sessions.

This longitudinal study followed infants from 14 (Time 1) to 26 months (Time 2). We examined:
1-Infant object exploration at Time 1
2-Parents’ spatial input during play at Time 1
3-Infants' spatial language at Time 2

A figure represents percentages of spatial words at Time 2 for preterm and full-term infants. The y-axis shows the percentages infants comprehend and produce. Each bar represents the percentage of infants in each group (preterm or full-term) who could comprehend or produce the corresponding spatial word shown on the x-axis.

You might wonder: do infants actually know spatial words before age 3?
According to parent reports, many do! Our results from CDI showed that infants in our sample were already producing several spatial terms by 26 months.
Here’s a summary from our data👇

Learning spatial words opens important pathways for later cognitive development.
While much of the existing research has focused on preschoolers and toddlers, the predictors of spatial language development in younger infants remain understudied, and this was our motivation.

We investigated how early object exploration and parents’ spatial input shape infants’ later spatial language development — in both preterm and full-term infants.
🧸🗣️➡️🧠

Spatial language development in preterm and full-term infants: The role of object exploration and parents’ spatial input Infants learn object features and relations among objects by exploring them. Object exploration and parents’ verbal input related to these spatial cha…

🚨 New paper out!
Huge thanks to my former advisor @tilbegoksun.bsky.social
and to @ecedemirlira.bsky.social .They were amazing collaborators as always 🙏
Here is the link:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Spatial language development in preterm and full-term infants: The role of object exploration and parents’ spatial input Infants learn object features and relations among objects by exploring them. Object exploration and parents’ verbal input related to these spatial cha…

Here is the latest paper from our lab led by my former amazing graduate student Mert:

Spatial language development in preterm and full-term infants: The role of object exploration and parents’ spatial input

@mkobas.bsky.social @ecedemirlira.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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