Cognitive mediators of US-China differences in early symbolic arithmetic.

John E Opfer,Lisa K Fazio,Xinlin Zhou,Robert S Siegler,Dan Kim,Jérôme Prado

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0255283

Abstract

Chinese children routinely outperform American peers in standardized tests of mathematics knowledge. To examine mediators of this effect, 95 Chinese and US 5-year-olds completed a test of overall symbolic arithmetic, an IQ subtest, and three tests each of symbolic and non-symbolic numerical magnitude knowledge (magnitude comparison, approximate addition, and number-line estimation). Overall Chinese children performed better in symbolic arithmetic than US children, and all measures of IQ and number knowledge predicted overall symbolic arithmetic. Chinese children were more accurate than US peers in symbolic numerical magnitude comparison, symbolic approximate addition, and both symbolic and non-symbolic number-line estimation; Chinese and U.S. children did not differ in IQ and non-symbolic magnitude comparison and approximate addition. A substantial amount of the nationality difference in overall symbolic arithmetic was mediated by performance on the symbolic and number-line tests.

Highlights

We explore how cognitive abilities, especially numerical magnitude knowledge, mediate nation effects on math performance, in particular symbolic arithmetic
In the last section, "Cognitive mechanisms underlying nationality effects on early symbolic arithmetic," we conduct a multiple mediation analysis to examine how much of the nationality effect on arithmetic proficiency occurs through the effect of numerical magnitude and which other cognitive mechanisms result in cross-national differences in symbolic arithmetic
We hypothesized that national differences in mathematics skills, symbolic arithmetic, arise through national differences in numerical magnitude representations

Summary

Introduction

We explore how cognitive abilities, especially numerical magnitude knowledge, mediate nation effects on math performance, in particular symbolic arithmetic. B. Performance on numerical magnitude measures: the mean error rates of comparison and approximate addition, and median responses in number-line estimation.

Results

Conclusion