Poster #11 - Effect of Manipulating Storybook Texts on Parental Math Talk

• In Event: Poster Session 01

Abstract

The frequency with which parents talk about numerical concepts has been linked to children’s mathematical knowledge (e.g., Braham et al., 2018, Gibson, Gunderson, & Levine, 2020; Purpura et al., 2021). Recent studies demonstrate that storybooks have the potential to stimulate math-related conversations between parents and their young children (e.g., Anderson, Anderson, & Shapiro, 2005). However, few studies have experimentally manipulated storybook features to examine how particular features impact parents’ math talk during storybook reading.
The current study examined whether the type of text affects preschool parents’ math talk. There were two alternative hypotheses. One was that the text with explicit math language primes the parents to engage in more math-related discussions during book reading because parents may feel compelled to explain the math concepts that are presented in the storybook. On the other hand, texts with explicit math language might decrease parents’ perceived need to talk about math beyond what is already present in the text, and illustrations alone may allow for elaboration, such that there would be greater math talk with implicit texts.
Parent-child dyads (N = 51) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: explicit or implicit. The only difference between conditions was whether math language was embedded in the text. In the implicit condition, math concepts were present only in the illustrations; whereas, in the explicit condition, math concepts were present both in the illustrations and explicitly embedded in the text. Other potential confounding variables (i.e., text length and complexity) were held constant across conditions. Videos of the book reading interactions were transcribed verbatim, and transcripts were coded to identify five categories of math talk: number identification, basic number skill (counting and cardinality), operations (addition/subtraction), numerical relations (ordinality and number comparison), and spatial talk (shape/pattern/spatial position/size or height comparison).
To test whether text type affected parents’ math talk, we compared the total number of non-text reading math utterances parents produced and the proportion of math-related utterances out of all non-text utterances in the two conditions. Parents who read the book with explicit math language in the text produced more extra-textual math talk than those who read the same story with the math concepts embedded only in the illustrations, F (1, 48) = 10.68, p = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.18; M = 52.16, versus M = 21.96, respectively. A similar pattern was found using the proportion of talk related to math concepts: F (1, 48) = 19.06, p<0.01, ηp2 = 0.31, with 30% of the total utterances related to math for parents in the explicit condition and 15% in the implicit condition. The difference between conditions was most noteworthy for arithmetic and number comparison talk, with the explicit condition eliciting a significantly greater amount of parental talk about these concepts.
The results suggest that explicit reference to math concepts in picture books can prime parents to discuss them, while providing opportunities via illustrations alone may not be sufficient. The importance of considering the features of materials as a means for enhancing parental math will be discussed.

Authors

• Muanjing Wang, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Elida V Laski

• Marina Vasilyeva