1-011 - Malleability of Spontaneous Focus On Numerosity and its relation with specific mathematics skills

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Mathematical thinking is often studied using tasks that explicitly focus on number. Research on Spontaneous Focus on Numerosity (SFON), the tendency to focus on numerical features without prompting, reveals individual differences that predict mathematical skills (Hannula & Lehtinen, 2005). It is unclear whether (a) contexts affect children’s SFON tendency, and (b) links between SFON and mathematics achievement are related to specific mathematics skills. This symposium is comprised of four complementary papers that together examine the malleability of SFON and its relation with mathematical thinking.

The first paper tests influences of two task presentation contexts, the salience of competing features and experimenter's actions, and reveals that the salience of competing features, but not experimenter’s actions, enhances attention to number. The second paper examines within-subject variation in children’s SFON tendency across six tasks that differ in response modality (action vs. verbal). The results show much variation across tasks, suggesting that SFON is subject to response modality more so than within-subject stability. The third paper examines the relation between counting skills and attention to numerosity among typically developing and deaf preschoolers, with findings supporting causal links attributed to the acquisition of cardinality. The fourth paper examines the predictive relation between preschoolers’ SFON and select aspects of mathematics skills in fifth grade, and suggests that preschool SFON is a unique predictor of arithmetic fluency and number line estimation, but not of rational number knowledge nor overall mathematical achievement. Together, these papers demonstrate the malleability of SFON yet its links to specific mathematics skills.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chairs

• Jenny Yun-Chen Chan, University of Minnesota

• Michele Mazzocco, University of Minnsota

Individual Presentations

• Competing features influence children’s attention to number - Presenting Author: Jenny Yun-Chen Chan, University of Minnesota; Michele Mazzocco, University of Minnsota

• Spontaneous focusing on numerosity in action and verbal task contexts - Presenting Author: Sophie Batchelor, Loughborough University; Jayne Pickering, Loughborough University

• Acquisition of cardinality supports children’s attention to numerosity - Presenting Author: Anna Shusterman, Wesleyan University; Rebecca Lange, Tufts University; Talia Berkowitz, University of Chicago; Pierina Cheung, Wesleyan University; Madeleine Barclay, Wesleyan University

• SFON at preschool as a predictor of mathematical skills and knowledge at grade 5 - Presenting Author: Minna Hannula-Sormunen, University of Turku; Eugenia Cristina Nanu, Department of Teacher Education, University of Turku; Jake McMullen, University of Turku; Petriina Munck, Ruskis Centre for Learning and Training