Editorial: multidisciplinary approaches to understanding early development of spatial skills: advances in linguistic, behavioral, and neuroimaging studies

Spatial cognition is a fundamental component of human cognition. Early spatial skills have longitudinal relations with later educational and occupational achievements in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Thus, it is critical to develop and deliver early interventions for young children to acquire spatial skills to lay a solid foundation for their future development. To achieve this goal, there is a need to understand how space is represented and presented by young minds and how young children acquire spatial language and skills using linguistic, behavioral, and neuroimaging approaches. This Special Collection represents an important endeavor to collect multidisciplinary studies on the early development of spatial skills and their implications for child development. As the guest editors, we strongly wish to advance the study on this topic by presenting this special collection.