Children learning English show a strong tendency to ignore fine-grained shape when learning novel spatial terms such as "on" or "in front of" or when interpreting known spatial terms. They show an equally strong tendency to attend to fine-grained shape when learning novel object names. For example, 3-year-olds shown an unusual object placed near a box and told, "This is acorp my box" tend to ignore the shape of the object and instead attend to its location relative to the box. They believe that "acorp" refers to a spatial relation. If they had instead been told "This is a prock" they would attend to the unusual object's shape. 

The first spatial words English-speaking children learn are "in," "on," and "under," along with such vertical directionality terms as "up" and "down." These initially refer to transformations of one spatial relationship into other. For example, “on” initially does not refer to one object on top of another, but only to the act of making an object become physically attached to another. 

Second, children learn words of proximity, such as "beside" and "between." Third, children learn words referring to frames of reference such as "in front of," "behind." The words "left" and "right" are learned much later, and are the source of confusion for many years, usually not well understood until 6 to 8 years of age (although specific attention to those works helps preschoolers orient themselves). 

By 2 years of age, children have considerable spatial competence on which language might be based. Further, in contrast to many who emphasize children’s naming of objects, children use spatial relational words more frequently, and often earlier, than names. Moreover, the use of even a single-word utterance by a 19-month-old, such as “in” may reflect more spatial competence than it first appears when the contexts differ widely, such as saying, “in” when about to climb into the child seat of a shopping cart and saying “in” when looking under couch cushions for coins she just put in the crack between cushions.

Children learning English show a strong tendency to ignore fine-grained shape when learning novel spatial terms such as "on" or "in front of" or when interpreting known spatial terms. They show an equally strong tendency to attend to fine-grained shape when learning novel object names. For example, 3-year-olds shown an unusual object placed near a box and told, "This is acorp my box" tend to ignore the shape of the object and instead attend to its location relative to the box. They believe that "acorp" refers to a spatial relation. If they had instead been told "This is a prock" they would attend to the unusual object's shape. 

The first spatial words English-speaking children learn are "in," "on," and "under," along with such vertical directionality terms as "up" and "down." These initially refer to transformations of one spatial relationship into other. For example, “on” initially does not refer to one object on top of another, but only to the act of making an object become physically attached to another. 

Second, children learn words of proximity, such as "beside" and "between." Third, children learn words referring to frames of reference such as "in front of," "behind." The words "left" and "right" are learned much later, and are the source of confusion for many years, usually not well understood until 6 to 8 years of age (although specific attention to those works helps preschoolers orient themselves). 

By 2 years of age, children have considerable spatial competence on which language might be based. Further, in contrast to many who emphasize children’s naming of objects, children use spatial relational words more frequently, and often earlier, than names. Moreover, the use of even a single-word utterance by a 19-month-old, such as “in” may reflect more spatial competence than it first appears when the contexts differ widely, such as saying, “in” when about to climb into the child seat of a shopping cart and saying “in” when looking under couch cushions for coins she just put in the crack between cushions.