The Correlation Between Spatial Skills and Mathematics within Socioeconomic Status (SES)

• In Event: Socioeconomically Diverse Families Contain Multitudes: Strengths-Based Approaches to Cognitive Development

Abstract

To help all children achieve in STEM, research has begun identifying specific strengths and strategies that higher performing children across the SES spectrum bring to school. In one study, lower SES students that activated spatial networks while solving mathematics problems showed more mathematics growth than those who did not; the opposite pattern was observed in higher SES children (Demir et al., 2016). Based on this finding, we hypothesized that the well-documented relation between spatial skill and mathematics may be particularly strong in lower SES, higher performing children. We tested this idea using a secondary analysis of a cross-sectional dataset showing strong correlations between spatial skill and mathematics across the elementary grades, and significant mediating effect of spatial skill on mathematics performance (Mix et al., 2016; Johnson et al., 2022). We ask specifically whether the correlation between spatial skill and mathematics achievement is stronger for lower SES high-performing children than for children in other parts of the SES/achievement distribution in this sample.

Method and Results. The dataset included 378 children tested during kindergarten using a battery of spatial and mathematics measures. In each grade, students were divided into lower and higher SES groups based on self-reported household income following Johnson et al.’s (2022) method where household incomes below $49,999 are considered lower SES. In one analysis, these groups were further subdivided based on their composite mathematics scores, to see whether lower SES children with relatively strong mathematics skills showed a stronger correlation between spatial skill and mathematics. Note that this subdivision resulted in uneven group sizes (smallest n = 49; highest n=141) and correspondingly low power. Nonetheless, the correlations between spatial skill and mathematics for each cell were significant and positive in each grade. Consistent with our hypothesis, children from lower SES backgrounds with high math skills exhibited the highest correlation strength [r(47)=.54, p<.001], and the difference in correlation strength between for children in this group and higher SES high performing children was statistically significant (p = .036). In a second analysis, the groups were subdivided by spatial skill to see whether correlation strengths were greater when children had a better developed fund of spatial skill to draw upon. As before, the correlations between spatial skill and mathematics were significant and positive in each grade, and as predicted, the highest correlation strength was for lower SES high performing children. In this case, the pairwise comparisons did not reach significance, but trended in that direction (Lower SES, High Performing vs. Lower SES, Low Performing: p = .06; and Lower SES, High Performing vs. Higher SES, High Performing: p = .07).

Conclusion. Though higher SES students have stronger spatial skills on average than lower SES students, our results reveal that within SES, there are potential differences in mathematics thinking. Specifically, high performing, lower SES children may have a stronger reliance on spatial skills that leads to better math performance. Further research is needed to investigate whether these strengths in spatial processing can be leveraged instructionally.

Authors

• Victoria Alexander, University of Maryland - College Park
  Presenting Author

• Kelly Sue Mix, University of Maryland - College Park

• Susan Cohen Levine, University of Chicago