Abstract
Visuospatial competencies are related to performance in mathematical domains in adulthood, but are not consistently related to mathematics achievement in children. We confirmed the latter for first graders and demonstrated that children who show above average first-to-fifth grade gains in visuospatial memory have an advantage over other children in mathematics. The study involved the assessment of the mathematics and reading achievement of 177 children in kindergarten to fifth grade, inclusive, and their working memory capacity and processing speed in first and fifth grade. Intelligence was assessed in first grade and their second to fourth grade teachers reported on their in-class attentive behavior. Developmental gains in visuospatial memory span (d = 2.4) were larger than gains in the capacity of the central executive (d = 1.6) that in turn were larger than gains in phonological memory span (d = 1.1). First to fifth grade gains in visuospatial memory and in speed of numeral processing predicted end of fifth grade mathematics achievement, as did first grade central executive scores, intelligence, and in-class attentive behavior. The results suggest there are important individual differences in the rate of growth of visuospatial memory during childhood and that these differences become increasingly important for mathematics learning.
Highlights
Children and adolescents with a high working memory capacity consistently outperform their lower capacity peers on mathematical cognition and achievement measures, but the relative contributions of the different components of working memory to these differences are not fully understood [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Phonological memory is sometimes but not always found to be related to skill at solving mathematical word problems, presumably because phonological skills contribute to the reading-related components of word problems [15,22]
We examined whether simultaneous visuospatial memory was a better predictor of overall mathematics achievement than sequential visuospatial memory, as found by Kyttalaand Lehto [5]; our study did not include a measure of active visuospatial memory
Summary
Children and adolescents with a high working memory capacity consistently outperform their lower capacity peers on mathematical cognition and achievement measures, but the relative contributions of the different components of working memory to these differences are not fully understood [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The central executive includes the attentional and inhibitory control mechanisms that enable the mental representation of multiple pieces of phonological or visuospatial information in working memory and the simultaneous mental manipulation of this information. Of these three components, competencies captured by the central executive are the most consistently related to mathematical learning and achievement from preschool to adolescence [1,6,8,9,10,11]. Phonological memory is sometimes but not always found to be related to skill at solving mathematical word problems (i.e., problems that are stated in written form and have to be translated into a mathematical problem to be solved), presumably because phonological skills contribute to the reading-related components of word problems [15,22]
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