Eylül Turan

How do children develop spatial reasoning? Children, like adults, use one of two strategies to solve mental rotation problems

New research from #FIU highlighted in #BOLDblog @jacobsfoundation.bsky.social
boldscience.org/how-do-child...

Deconstructing Block Building Behaviours in 7- to 9-year-olds; Associations with Spatial and Mathematics Performance Block construction performance is related to mathematics and block construction training leads to improvement in mathematics. However, block construction is a complex task, and it is unknown which ...

📣📣 A recent paper by Emily K Farran et al. in JCD:

"Deconstructing Block Building Behaviours in 7- to 9-year-olds; Associations with Spatial and Mathematics Performance"

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

It never ends (you’ll see): another paper from @urvi.bsky.social this time on how language structure impacts children’s intuition that numbers are infinite (see?)!

article front page, includes title, authors, affiliations, journal links and publisher logo

I'm delighted to share this interesting work, a wonderful collaboration with colleagues based in the Canary Islands. ☀️

Acta Psychol. 2026 [https://lnkd.in/e3Q_xQ-H].

#MathAnxiety #MathEd #MathTeacher #CogSci #Edusky #DevPsy @mclstrainee.bsky.social @mcls-official.bsky.social
@ioe.bsky.social

Profiles of fraction knowledge in first grade and their relation to cognitive and mathematical skills Latent profile analysis was used to examine variation in early fraction knowledge among first graders (N = 204; Mage = 6.68 years) across nonsymbolic …

Share link to new article from our early fraction understanding project--
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Structural Alignment and Linguistic Contrast Help Children Learn a Key Principle of Spatial Construction Spatial representation and reasoning are important in cognition, yet they are challenging for children. Research has shown that comparison can support learning about common spatial structure and that...

Structural Alignment and Linguistic Contrast Help Children Learn a Key Principle of Spatial Construction - Zheng - 2025 - Cognitive Science - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Last week, we were delighted to host Dr. Can Çarkoğlu, a former undergraduate assistant in our lab. He presented his doctoral research at Purdue University and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago!

I'm planning to organize a symposium at #MCLS2026 on the (longitudinal) associations between spatial ability (e.g., mental rotation) and math in preschoolers, if you'd like to join or know anyone who might be interested let me know! @mclstrainee.bsky.social @mcls-official.bsky.social

New paper alert! We examined the effects of a teacher-delivered quantitative language intervention. In just 3 weeks, dual-language learners improved in their quantitative language skills. It was a privilege to work with such a great team!

Free access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hello #MCLS2026, Padua, Italy! 🇮🇹

This is the moment to find international researchers to compose your #symposium. The call for submissions will open in November!

🎯 Registration will open by mid-January.

Check @mcls-official.bsky.social and @mclstrainee.bsky.social for updates.

Such a pleasure to work with @boldinsights.bsky.social to put this piece together. Always happy to discuss the role of spatial thinking in STEM learning and beyond

New paper with @euniceyiu.bsky.social both a theoretical account of how empowerment in RL could lead to causal learning and some lovely experiments showing that children do just that.

How to boost children’s spatial skills – and their maths performance Training children’s spatial abilities improves maths performance, studies show – and new research from the University of Surrey identifies practical teaching methods to do just that

Training children's spatial skills improves their maths performance, research shows – and here are 6 ways teachers can do that

✨New publication✨ #MathActivities on #SocialMedia: Examining content, design, and alignment with mathematical cognition research

doi.org/10.1016/j.ec...

with Juyun Lee and Eric Dearing @ericdearing.bsky.social

Big congrats!!!

<em>Child Development</em> | SRCD Journal | Wiley Online Library This study, involving 120 children (Mage = 4.25; SD = 0.83; 53% Female, 49% White, 23% multiracial, 16% Black, 9% Asian American, and 3% Latine) and their parents, examined parent talk constructs and....

Sharing my recent pub with the bsky community! The Factor Structure of Parents' Math-Related Talk and Its Relation to Children's Early Academic Skills doi.org/10.1111/cdev...

🥳🥳🥳

From language to mathematics and vice versa?: A longitudinal study on the associations between preschoolers' mathematical language and mathematical abilities Mathematical language, such as quantitative (e.g., few) and spatial (e.g., after) terms, is critical for mathematical development. However, studies of…

New paper alert: “From language to mathematics and vice versa?: A longitudinal study on the associations between preschoolers' mathematical language and mathematical abilities” with a wonderful team @bertdesmedt.bsky.social 🥳 Access here ➡️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Come check out our lab's research this week at
@srcdorg.bsky.social! ✨

Striato-cortical connectivity patterns predict clinical profiles in Huntington’s disease Huntington’s disease is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder affecting striato-cortical circuits, with significant heterogeneity in the severity an…

It's different from the work I'm doing now, but I was involved in an fMRI project during my Master's and it's so exciting to see the outcome of it! Special thanks to Estela Camara and Audrey E. De Paepe as well as the whole Brainvitge group! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How does activity context relate to parents’ responses to preschoolers’ errors and correct math statements? Research shows that parent–child math activities in the home positively relate to children’s math learning. Although there is evidence suggesting that…

New paper out of the lab! Can Carkoglu investigated the different ways parents respond to children's math errors (and correct responses). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I am one of these NSF postdocs. NSF has frozen everyone’s access to their salaries and research stipends (that were already awarded) with no information about when they might be expected to be unfrozen. It still appears like we are expected to continue doing our work though.

@mclstrainee.bsky.social @mcls-official.bsky.social
Still making sense of ur data or looking for the 4th symposium speaker?😬
✨We've got you covered✨
📢MCLS deadline is extended to 26 JAN 2025. That's 9⃣more days or 2⃣1⃣6⃣hrs‼️ If you don't have a symposium, there's definitely time to form/join one😉

A Very Human Answer to One of AI’s Deepest Dilemmas Imagine that we designed a fully intelligent, autonomous robot that acted on the world to accomplish its goals. How could we make sure that it would want the same things we do? Alison Gopnik explores....

www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/ai-... — Alison Gopnik

Thrilled to share exciting news!

I’ve joined Ariel Starr and her amazing team, the LCD Lab, as a Postdoc! I received the warmest welcome, and couldn’t be more excited to work alongside such brilliant minds 🥳 Yay Huskies!

Preschoolers Represent Abstract Relations Predicated on Kind Membership Abstract. Recent work demonstrates that U.S. preschoolers can represent the abstract relational concepts same and different when these abstract relational concepts are predicated upon perceptual dimen...

New year, new paper! 4- and 5-year-olds can represent abstract relations (i.e., sameness and difference) predicated on an abstract dimension (i.e., kind membership) in a relational match-to-sample task. Moreover, noun label training facilitates task performance.

direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

I am incredibly happy to have been part of this work! A wonderful team to work with and to learn from ☺️

Timss: could a focus on spatial reasoning improve maths scores? The latest Timss international rankings show English pupils' weakness in key areas of maths – and our lack of focus on spatial reasoning is a major factor, argues Emily Farran

Delighted to write for the Times Education Supplement.

Timms: Could a focus on spatial reasoning improve maths scores?

www.tes.com/magazine/tea...

For more: www.surrey.ac.uk/spatial-reas...

A reminder to join us tomorrow (December 3) for our Speed Networking Events! Join us at 4pm HKT / 7pm AEDT / 8am GMT / 9am CET  and/or 11am EST / 8am PST / 4pm GMT / 5pm CET to chat informally with potential mentors, mentees, and buddy matches!

For my first post on bsky, a throwback: me two months ago becoming a Dr. 🤓 Forever grateful to my fabulous advisor @bertdesmedt.bsky.social and jury members @ekfarran.bsky.social @davidjpurpura.bsky.social and Pol Ghesquière.
Bonus: the beautiful sea in Turkey & lovely gift from my colleagues!