Helping Hands: An Intervention to Increase Families’ Gesture use During Informal Math Tasks

• In Event: Parents’ Role in Children’s Numeracy Development: A Focus on Numeracy Gesturing and Talk

Abstract

Families’ early math talk across various tasks can impact early math skills (Levine et al., 2010). Math talk is important as it can encourage children to engage in math-related language and promote learning early math concepts. However, less is known about how nonverbal communication, specifically hand gestures, may relate to children’s growing mathematical abilities. Children’s own gestures have been shown to reduce cognitive load, direct attention, and convey implicit conceptual knowledge and a readiness to learn (Goldin-Meadow et al., 2001). Furthermore, research shows that young children also benefit from observing others' gestures about new concepts during learning contexts (Valenzeno et al., 2003). The current study examined whether parents' and children's gesture use was malleable following a brief experimental manipulation.

The goal of this study was to examine the effects of a short intervention where both children and their parent’s hear about the benefits of using hand gestures during math tasks (e.g., counting on your fingers, identifying numbers on a page, etc.) Participants of the study were 3- to 5-year-old children and their parents (n = 51). These parent-child dyads were randomly assigned to watch a recording of either a math gesture-focused (n = 27) or play-focused (n = 24) script detailing how they could modify their behavior to enhance learning. The dyads then made a video recording of them reading a math-related book and playing a number-based board game together, and submitted the recording using a secure online platform. Video submissions of the interaction were transcribed for all of the talk and gestures used by both parents and children.

Analyses showed that children who heard the gesture-focused scripts used more gestures (M = 34.75) than those in the play-script group (M = 23.67), t(40.092) = -2.01, p = 0.05; d = -0.57; Figure 1). There were no significant differences in parents’ gestures between the gesture-focused and play-focused script conditions (M= 30 vs. 31, respectively, t(48.50) = -0.16, p = 0.87, d = -0.04). However, the parents who heard the gesture-focused script used a higher proportion of gestures which highlighted higher-level math content (e.g. cardinality, ordinality, arithmetic; M = 0.36) versus more basic math concepts (e.g. counting, cardinality) compared to those in the play condition (M = 0.19; t(40.213) = -2.629, p = 0.012, d = -0.75; Figure 2).

These results suggest that it is possible to change the amount of gestures used by children, as well as the quality of mathematical content contained within parent’s gestures during a math specific context. Additional analyses regarding the relation between gestures and math talk, parent versus child relations, and age will also be discussed. These findings provide a promising glimpse into the possibility of an effective gesture intervention with families for children’s early math development.

Authors

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

• Gillian Grose, University of Maryland - College Park

• Neela Krishnasamy, University of Maryland, College Park

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