Predictors of Children's Early Numeracy: Environmental Variables, Intergenerational Pathways, and Children's Cognitive, Linguistic, and Non-symbolic Number Skills.

Luca Bernabini,Annalisa Guarini,Valentina Tobia,Paola Bonifacci

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.505065

Luca Bernabini, Annalisa Guarini + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.505065

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Abstract

Early numeracy skills in preschool years have been found to be related to a variety of different factors, including Approximate Number System (ANS) skills, children’s cognitive and linguistic skills, and environmental variables such as home numeracy activities. The present study aimed to analyze the differential role of environmental variables, intergenerational patterns, children’s cognitive and linguistic skills, and their ANS in supporting early math skills. The sample included 64 children in their last year of kindergarten and one parent of each child. Children were administered a battery of cognitive and linguistic tasks, and a non-symbolic comparison task as a measure of ANS. Parents were administered similar tasks assessing cognitive skills, math skills, and ANS skills (estimation and non-symbolic comparison), together with a questionnaire on home numeracy. Results showed that home numeracy predicted children’s early math skills better than a number of parent and child variables. Considering children’s skills, their ability in the non-symbolic magnitude comparison task was the strongest predictor of early math skills. Results reinforce the importance of the role of home numeracy activities and children’s ANS skills above that of parents’ math skills.

Highlights

Numerical abilities, those that involve the understanding of magnitudes and the development of numerical processing skills, are manifested during the first few months of life in humans from various cultural backgrounds (Simon et al, 1995; Gordon, 2004; Xu et al, 2005)
Regarding intergenerational models, most studies were referred to literacy skills (Bonifacci et al, 2014; van Bergen et al, 2015) and very few studies tried to apply this model to the development of math skills (Braham and Libertus, 2017; Navarro et al, 2018) but these studies did not account for variables related to children’s cognitive and linguistic skills
We aimed to evaluate (1) the variables associated with early math skills in preschool children, as well as (2) concurrent predictors of children’s early math skills, including environmental variables (SES, home numeracy), intergenerational paths and children’s cognitive, linguistic, and Approximate Number System (ANS) skills

Summary

Introduction

Those that involve the understanding of magnitudes and the development of numerical processing skills, are manifested during the first few months of life in humans from various cultural backgrounds (Simon et al, 1995; Gordon, 2004; Xu et al, 2005). Regarding intergenerational models, most studies were referred to literacy skills (Bonifacci et al, 2014; van Bergen et al, 2015) and very few studies tried to apply this model to the development of math skills (Braham and Libertus, 2017; Navarro et al, 2018) but these studies did not account for variables related to children’s cognitive and linguistic skills. In the present study, focused on children at the end of preschool years, we took account of many of the candidate factors that previous literature suggested to be related to math skills development, including (1) environmental variables, (2) parents’ math skills and (3) children’s cognitive and early math skills. In order to better account for the selection of the candidate predictors included in the study, we will briefly revise previous evidence for these three domains

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