Behavioral and Math Skill Development Over Early Childhood

• In Event: Examining proximal and distal factors that promote kindergarten readiness among preschool children in the United States

Abstract

Over early childhood, children experience dramatic growth across developmental domains (including cognitive, behavioral, and physical), which set the stage for later learning (Cunha et al., 2006; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). By school entry, children’s academic skills, particularly math, have been shown to be predictive of continued school success (Claessens & Engel, 2013; Duncan et al., 2007). Studies have largely found that behavioral skills at school entry and in early elementary school (e.g., self-regulation and prosocial skills, internalizing and externalizing behaviors) have few to no significant impacts on later academic success (Bodovski & Youn, 2011; Duncan et al., 2007). However, in looking at which skills predict school readiness, behavioral skills in preschool have been found to be associated with children’s reading, vocabulary, and math skills at school entry (Arnold et al., 2012; Doctoroff et al., 2016; McClelland et al., 2007). Likely, the development of behavioral and academic skills is interrelated and the patterns of association shift over development. Specifically, the interrelationships between math and behavioral skill development prior to school entry are not well understood, yet have important implications for understanding how to best prepare young children for kindergarten.

The goal of the current study was to address this gap by examining the between-person and within-person associations between math skills, prosocial skills, and externalizing problems in a large, diverse sample of 4- to 6-year-old children, a time period that ranges from preschool to kindergarten entry. A sample of 1,750 children (53% male; 47% White, 16% Black, 16% Hispanic, 8% Asian, and 13% other or multi-race; 51% low-income) from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) was utilized. A random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RICLPM) was estimated to examine the interrelationships between behavioral (parent-reported prosocial skills and externalizing problems) and math skills (directly assessed) across the ages of 4, 5 and 6 years. Descriptive statistics on these measures are shown in Table 1.

As expected, results from the RICLPM (Figure 1) revealed significant between-person associations between each of these skills over time. After controlling for these between-person differences, there was varying stability within skills over time, with math skills predicting future math skills from ages 4 to 5 and ages 5 to 6, prosocial skills at age 4 predicting prosocial skills at age 5, and externalizing problems at age 5 being predictive of externalizing problems at age 6. There were also several significant within-person associations between domains, with prosocial skills at age 4 predicting math skills at age 5. At age 5, math skills were predictive of prosocial skills at age 6. Notably, there were no significant within-person associations between externalizing problems and prosocial or math skills over time. Findings highlight the importance of supporting children’s prosocial skills at age 4, externalizing problems at age 5, and math skills at ages 4 and 5 in preschool and home environments. In particular, children’s prosocial skills at age 4 may yield benefits for children’s later math skills while math skills at age 5 may be promotive of children’s later prosocial skills.

Authors

• Eleanor Fisk, James Bell Associates
  Presenting Author

• Caitlin S Lombardi, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author