Poster #34 - “I see four boats”: Parent and Child Spontaneous Focus on Number and Child Math Ability

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Spontaneous Focus on Number (SFON) is the tendency a person has to notice number in their environment. Children vary in their SFON tendency and this variation has been shown to relate to their math ability (Hannula & Lehtinen, 2005). However, underlying causes of this variation are unclear. One possible contributor to this variation could be parental input. Similar to children, there is evidence that adults vary in their SFON tendency (Chan & Mazzocco, 2017). Thus, parents’ SFON tendency may relate to their children’s SFON tendency (through genetic or environmental influences) and therefore influence children’s mathematical development.

Further, studies have typically used non-verbal, imitation tasks to measure SFON. Recent studies have examined if relations between SFON and math ability hold when SFON is measured verbally (Batchelor, Inglis & Gilmore, 2015) and when number is placed in competition with other features, such as the color and pattern of items (Chan & Mazzocco, 2017). The goals of the current study were to examine 1) the relations between parents’ and children’s SFON; 2) whether children’s SFON on a verbal task is related to their SFON on a non-verbal task; 3) whether children’s SFON tendency on both tasks are related to their overall mathematical achievement.

In an ongoing study, children aged 3 to 7 years (n = 34; 62% female) and their parents (n = 32; 81% mothers) were recruited from a school summer camp in a mid-Atlantic state and completed two sessions with an experimenter. Children first completed two measures of SFON. In the picture description task (adapted from Batchelor et al., 2015), children were asked to look at three pictures with varying amounts of items (e.g., two kids, three seashells) and describe them. Descriptions were coded for use of number words. In the matching task (adapted from Chan & Mazzocco, 2017), children were presented with images that could match a target on number, or features of high (color, shape) or low (pattern, location) salience. Responses were coded for how often number was selected as the best match. Children also completed the Test of Early Mathematics Ability (TEMA; Ginsburg & Baroody, 2003). Parents completed the SFON matching task in an online questionnaire.

Preliminary results indicate that parents show significantly higher tendency to choose number than children (Figure 1) in both high (t(29)=-3.20, p=.003, d=.584) and low (t(29)=-2.29, p=.030, d=.417) salience contexts on the matching task. However, children’s and parent’s performance did not relate to each other (r(30)=.102, p=.59). The two measures of children’s SFON also did not relate to each other (Table 1), however children’s use of number words on the picture description task significantly related to their mathematical ability (r(34)=.448, p<.01). It is possible that this relation is due to the verbal nature of both the picture task and the TEMA. Results will discussed in terms of understanding of potential intergenerational SFON tendencies and the relations between different SFON measures and children’s mathematical abilities.

Authors

• Mary DePascale, University of Maryland, College Park
  Presenting Author

• Geetha Ramani, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author