Poster #69 - Beneath Counts: Exploring the Dynamics of Caregiver-Child Conversations About Numbers and Math in Semi-Structured Activities

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

Conversations between caregivers and children involving number (i.e., number talk (NT)) are associated with children’s early math skills (e.g., Gibson et al., 2020). The most commonly assessed feature of these interactions in prior research is the frequency of number words or utterances from each speaker. Less attention has been given to other important characteristics of these interactions including the reciprocity, consistency, and sequential nature of the exchanges over time. Cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA) offers one approach for capturing these dynamic characteristics of conversations. This method exploits the co-visitation of events within dynamical systems (e.g., occurrence of NT in conversations) to quantify the reciprocity, consistency, and sequential nature of behaviors across time. The present study aims to derive richer measures of caregiver-child conversations about numbers in two semi-structured activities using CRQA.

Caregivers and their preschool-aged children (n = 123, Mean child age = 4.43 years, SD = 3.6 months) were video-recorded engaging with a picture book and grocery toys in the home for about 5-8 minutes each. Their interactions were transcribed at the utterance level and frequencies of caregiver and child NT utterances were calculated. CRQA was used to obtain a recurrence rate (RR), the extent to which dyads reciprocated each other’s NT; determinism (DET), the extent to which dyads engaged in number exchanges; mean diagonal length (meanL), the average utterance length of exchanges; laminarity (LAM), the extent to which speakers engaged in consecutive number utterances; and trapping time (TT), the average length of speakers’ consecutive NT. Then, recurrence plots (RPs) were generated for each interaction displaying how dyads’ NT recurred and evolved over time.

Dyads exhibited considerable variability in the degree to which they employed and reciprocated each other’s NT (Table 1). Descriptive analyses of RPs between tasks revealed visible differences in the consistency and density of NT across time, even when dyads employed relatively similar quantities of number utterances in both tasks (Figure 1). Wilcoxon signed-rank tests for paired samples revealed that RR and DET significantly differed by task. On average, dyads reciprocated NT more often in the grocery (Mean RR = 1.09, SD = 1.33, Median = .67, Range = 0-7.33) than book activity (Mean = .69, SD = 1.07, Median = .36, Range = 0-8.26), W = 5761, p < .01. However, when dyads reciprocated each other’s NT in the form of exchanges, this tended to occur more often in the book (Mean DET = 26.23, SD = 21.04, Median = 26.09, Range = 0-82.31) than grocery activity (Mean = 16.09, SD = 12.48, Median = 15.94, Range = 0-54.71), W = 9528.5, p < .001. All other recurrence metrics did not significantly differ by activity. These differences were related to dyads’ roleplay and structure of the activities. Overall, CRQA has the potential to extend our understanding of number-related conversational processes that may support children’s math, which has the potential to inform the design of informal learning activities that leverage existing caregiver-child conversational practices across contexts.

Authors

• Shirley Duong, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Jorge Manuel Carvalho Pereira, University of Pittsburgh

• Dominique Lopiccolo

• Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh

• Heather J. Bachman, University of Pittsburgh

• Melissa E Libertus, University of Pittsburgh