The Role of Gesture and Working Memory in Head Start Preschoolers' Numerical Knowledge

• In Event: How and Why are Socioeconomic Status and Young Children’s Math Skills Linked?

Abstract

Gestures can enhance communication, learning, and general problem solving by reducing
cognitive load and conveying a speaker’s implicit conceptual knowledge (Goldin‐Meadow, 2011). Prior work has shown a positive relation between the number knowledge and spontaneous gesture use of preschoolers from middle- to high-income families during a numerical task (Gordon et al., 2019). However, less is known about the relation between low-income children’s gesture use, domain general abilities such as working memory (WM) and their early math knowledge. Understanding these relations is critical as the average mathematical ability between children from lower-SES and higher-SES backgrounds can vary widely (Jordan et al., 1992).

We begin to address this gap by investigating the relations between preschoolers’ number knowledge, WM, and spontaneous gesture use. First, we sought to expand on previous work that focused on middle- to high-income families by including children from low-income backgrounds. Second, we explored the relations between children’s WM ability, number knowledge, and gesture use during a Give-a-Number cardinality task, which measures understanding of quantities in a set. Lastly, we examined whether children’s gestures affected the relation between their WM and cardinality knowledge. We predicted that children’s unprompted gestures would moderate the relation between children’s WM and their Give-N task performance.

Head Start preschoolers (n=81; Mage=4.75; 60% female) were videotaped completing a modified version of the Give-N task during which children created sets of 1-8 items. Head Start is a federally funded program for families whose incomes are below the federal poverty guidelines (annual household income of $25,750 or less for a family of four). Children also completed Word Span and Corsi-Blocks tasks to assess their WM.
Analyses showed that children’s gesture use during the cardinality task was related to their overall task performance. Specifically, children’s use of pointing and counting gestures were positively correlated with both their Give-N score , as well as their WM (Table 1). Furthermore, children with different WM ability levels varied on their cardinality knowledge (F(2,77) = 5.14, p <0.05) as well as their spontaneous gesture use (F(2,77) = 4.00, p<0.05) during the cardinality task above and beyond the effects of age. While children’s gesture use did not moderate the relation between their math performance and WM (p = .14), post hoc analyses were conducted to further explore the relation between Point and Count gestures and Knower Level (the highest set size children were able to create consistently in the Give-N task) for children with lower, average, and higher WM. Results indicated that for children of low and average WM, Pointing and Counting Gestures have a positive relation with Knower Level, whereas there appears to be no relation between gesture and knower level for children categorized as high WM (Figure 1).

The current study provides additional evidence for a relation between children’s cardinality knowledge and their use of gesture within a low-income sample. The results suggest that children’s domain-general WM ability may further explain whether children use gestures as a strategy.

Authors

• Raychel Barkin, University of Maryland - College Park
  Presenting Author

• Nicole R Scalise, Washington State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Geetha B. Ramani, University of Maryland - College Park
  Non-Presenting Author