How Children’s App Play Could Facilitate Spatial Skill Development

This conceptual article offers an analysis of how children’s play with digital media, including apps and touchscreen devices, may influence their learning and development of spatial skills. Many of children’s formative spatial experiences occur during their play, and a well-established body of research demonstrates the benefits of video and computer games for older children’s and adults’ spatial skills. Building on this prior work, the current article suggests that app play could benefit young children’s spatial skills as well. Our analysis focuses on the unique digital features of children’s apps. Children’s interactions with these features can reveal spatial information that would be difficult or impossible for children to see during their experiences in the real world. Consequently, app play could expand the types of spatial information children can view. We suggest based on research from developmental psychology that viewing novel spatial information could have benefits for children’s spatial skill development. We provide examples of these digital features in publicly available, popular children’s apps. Finally, we discuss how this research can be used to raise awareness among parents and educators of the spatial learning opportunities in children’s app play.