Poster #29 - Latine Caregivers’ Mathematical Gestures and its Relation to Child Math Outcomes

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

Gestures are widely considered a tool to assist children’s learning in a wide range of domains, including language, math cognition, and socio–emotional development. However, the vast majority of research on adult gestures that support children’s early math development has occurred with teachers in classroom settings. The handful of studies that have examined caregiver math gestures have been conducted with monolingual English-speaking families. This research shows that math gestures provide a unique support for children’s mathematical development that goes beyond the one provided by mathematical language. However, given variations in the frequency and use of gestures across cultural and linguistic groups, it is crucial to investigate how these dynamics unfold across families from diverse backgrounds. The present study addressed this gap by exploring how Spanish- and English-speaking Latine caregivers used mathematical gestures during a household teaching task with their preschool aged children and examined its concurrent relation to child math outcomes.

Method

Participants were 97 Latine caregivers and their preschoolers (Mage child = 48 months; SD = 8.69; 58% girls). Most caregivers were foreign born (73%; n = 71), predominantly from Mexico; the remaining 27% were US born first generation. Caregivers had, on average, 11 years (SD = 3.27) of formal education. Caregivers were told that we were interested in investigating how young children learn from their caregivers, as to not prime for math. Caregivers were asked to teach their children how to set a picnic table and were provided with a picnic basket with supplies. Interactions were videotaped and transcribed using ELAN and a standardized transcription system. Each parental and child utterance and nonverbal turn were coded for presence and types of math language (spatial and numeracy) and math gestures (pointing to indicate space, pointing to indicate one-to-one correspondence, cardinal hand gestures, and all gesture). A subset of children (n=61) were assessed for math skills using the Birthday Party assessment (Ginsberg & Pappas, 2016).

Results and Discussion
Preliminary analyses showed that most mathematical gestures supplemented math talk (M = 17.69, SD = 14.70), as compared to gestures that accompanied non-math talk (M = 6.99, SD = 7.55) or used without language (M = 1.21, SD = 1.95). The majority of math gestures were spatial (89%) as compared to numeracy (11%). A repeated-measures MANCOVA, controlling for type of math language (i.e., percentage of numeracy utterances with gestures out of all numeracy utterances), showed that caregivers used proportionally more math gestures with spatial language, followed by numeracy language, and then with non-math language. Additionally,caregivers with more education used more numeracy gestures (b = e0.33, p = 0.008), and caregivers of boys used more math gestures to supplement non-math talk (b = e-0.34, p = 0.05) as compared to caregivers of girls. Regression analyses showed that use of math gestures was positively related to child math outcomes (b = e0.48, p = 0.06). Results will be discussed in relation to within-group variations in the math practices of low-income Latine families and implications to support young children’s early math development.

Authors

• Verónica Mesalles, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Gigliana Melzi, New York University