Poster #36 - Play Prompts for Parents in Children’s Museums Increase Children’s Exposure to Math Talk

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

In order to grasp foundational math concepts, preschoolers need exposure to mathematically relevant input, which often comes from caregivers using math concepts during everyday interactions (“math talk”). Parental math talk predicts children’s concurrent and later math skills (e.g., Levine et al., 2010), but little is known about why some parents use more math talk than others. In this study, our goals were to 1) examine if prompts in a children’s museum could promote math-related conversations between parents and children and, 2) examine how characteristics of the parent-child dyad influence these interactions.

We randomly assigned 58 preschoolers (M age=4 .11 years) to one of two 5-minute, parent-guided play conditions in the museum’s mock grocery store. Parents were told to help their child shop for a meal with a $20 budget (Budget/Numerical Prompt) or a meal that included all food groups (Healthy Eating/Non-numerical Prompt). Parents wore audio recorders and the recordings were later coded for overall talk and math talk (see category descriptions in Table 1). Children also completed assessments to measure two math skills: spontaneous focus on number (SFON; i.e., the tendency to pay attention to numerical information without prompting) and cardinality (i.e., knowing that the last number word used when counting is the quantity of the set). Parents completed a demographic information survey and math anxiety questionnaire.

Both parents and children used more of all math talk categories in the Budget condition compared to the Healthy Eating condition (Table 1). However, there was no difference in parents’ or children’s overall talk across the two conditions, suggesting our prompts elicited similar levels of verbal engagement.

In all regression models predicting math talk, parents and children used more math talk in the Budget compared to the Healthy Eating condition, even after controlling for overall talk, parent education and math anxiety, and children’s math skills (Table 2). In line with studies showing that many parents find the domain of math either uninteresting or anxiety-inducing, higher levels of parents’ anxieties about math were associated with lower levels of math talk (specifically, about objects). Finally, children’s understanding of cardinality was associated with higher amounts of child and parent math talk specifically about money, possibly because these quantities were not physically present and thus required a more advanced understanding of cardinality. These relations were further qualified by significant interactions with Condition. In the Budget condition, parents and children used significantly more math talk about money when children understood cardinality, but in the Healthy Eating condition, similar amounts of math talk were used regardless of children’s cardinality understanding.

Overall, our prompts were efficacious at shifting how parents interacted with their children. When we gave parents simple, high-level instructions to incorporate a budget into their grocery store play, they incorporated numerical content, not just about money, but a range of math talk categories. Yet, these interactions were still impacted by parents’ own anxieties about math and children’s math competence. Our study suggests that researchers should be mindful of these characteristics when designing future interventions to promote math-related play.

Authors

• Emily Braham, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Koleen McCrink, Barnard College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melissa Libertus, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author