Poster #4 - The role of children’s attitudes and affect in guiding attention to maths

• In Event: Poster Session 15

Abstract

Children’s attitudes strongly influence their interest in learning (Dowker et al., 2019). Early negative attitudes result in further deterioration in attitudes and in an increase in anxiety towards maths, as children get older (Ramirez et al., 2013). Furthermore, attitudes may influence the deployment of foundational processes for maths ability, Executive Functions (EF), defined as the abilities which allow children to attend to specific information and use it during learning. However, the early presentation of attitudes to maths, and their role in modifying how EF is deployed in function of maths have not been studied in young children. Here, we addressed both current limitations by studying these mechanisms in 6-year-old children (N=60) and developed new methodological approaches to address multiple components of attitudes to maths and their influence on EF. We leveraged a newly designed gaze-scoring pipeline to examine EF guidance when children engaged in a mathematical task within a pressure-free environment, and again within a pressure-induced numeracy task. Gaze indices throughout the task were assessed as predictors of children’s numeracy performance. Finally, we triangulated these measures against child and parental reports of attitudes. We hypothesised that children’s EF guidance to numbers will predict their performance within both the pressure-free and the pressure-induced numeracy tasks and that their attitudes will moderate this relationship. Our new methodologies deepen our understanding of how children might develop foundational EF mechanisms at the early stages of maths education, which might help to better equip their future maths learning experiences.

Group Authors

Gattas, SU., Fraser, A., Robinson, I., Minea, A., & Scerif, G. (Oxford)

Authors

• Sylvia Gattas, University of Oxford
  Presenting Author

• Gaia Scerif, University of Oxford