Poster #58 - Numbers and Shapes with Mom and Dad: Math Talk Between Toddlers and Their Parents

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

At school entry, young children demonstrate wide within- and between-group variability in math understanding and skill. A critical source of these individual differences is exposure to math concepts at home, including through caregivers’ use of math language. Yet, most prior work examining parental math talk focuses on English-speaking mothers and their preschool- and school-aged children.

As such, we seek to expand on existing work in several ways. First, we extend to populations not typically featured in math language research, including fathers and Spanish speakers. Second, we focus on an early period of math language development, when toddlers acquire substantial vocabulary during the third year of life. We also examine two classes of math language, numeracy (e.g., numbers, ordinals) and spatial talk (e.g., shapes, orientation), which are often studied separately. Finally, we test a remote approach to data collection.

Descriptively, we aimed to understand how much math language mothers, fathers, and toddlers use, what types of math words are most common, and what variation exists. We also asked whether variation among parents in math talk relates to variation among children at this early age. An overarching aim to this descriptive work was to test the feasibility of our remote task and whether it would yield sufficiently varied data.

Participants were 155 toddlers (M=30.6 months) and their parents (152 mothers, 136 fathers) from English- and/or Spanish-speaking families. Mother-toddler and father-toddler dyads were video-recorded completing a remote “picture book” task via Zoom. Each toddler saw four images in total (two with each parent), depicting colorful scenes designed to interest toddlers and elicit math talk. Sessions averaged 6.0 minutes (SD=3.57), in line with the duration expected from a similar in-person task. We transcribed and coded videos for the number of mother, father, and toddler utterances, number of overall math words, and 11 specific math word categories: number, shape, magnitude/comparison, location/direction, deictics, orientation, spatial features/properties, functions, ordinals, superordinates, and time.

Results reveal substantial math language use and wide variability among mothers and fathers. Amount of math language overall and by category did not differ by parent or child gender, ethnicity, or dominant language. On average, 26.5% of each mother’s utterances contained math language (range=3.0%-48.5%), as did 27.4% of each father’s utterances (range=5.9%-52.1%). Mothers produced 7.8 math tokens (SD=3.37) and 3.7 distinct math types (SD=1.34) per minute, and fathers produced 8.0 tokens (SD=3.84) and 3.7 types (SD=1.45) per minute. Figure 1 highlights striking variation within mothers and fathers and the distribution of words by category for each group.

Parents’ math language also related to toddlers’ math language, r(150) = .32, p < .001 for mothers, r(134) = .30, p <.001 for fathers (Figure 2). Toddlers averaged 3.23 math tokens per minute with mothers (SD=2.34) and 3.29 with fathers (SD=2.57), ranging widely from 0 to 11.2 tokens. Numbers and location/direction words occurred most frequently.

We found the remote approach successful in generating usable, varied data on mothers’, fathers’, and toddlers’ math language. Data collection, coding, and additional analyses (e.g., temporal unfolding of math language) are ongoing.

Authors

• Mackenzie Swirbul, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Alex M. Silver, University of Pittsburgh

• Melissa E Libertus, University of Pittsburgh

• Natasha J Cabrera, University of Maryland - College Park

• Catherine S Tamis-Lemonda, New York University