Poster #87 - Toys and Number Talk Elicitation: A Gendered Perspective

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Early childhood math ability is a strong predictor of later academic achievement (Duncan et al., 2007). Evidence suggests that the frequency with which parents talk about numbers is positively related to preschool-aged children’s math ability (Susperreguy & Davis-Kean, 2016). Although play with math-related toys (e.g., board games, puzzles, or blocks) also supports numerical knowledge in young children (Ramani et al., 2015), little research has examined how these toys elicit conversations about math, particularly between boys and girls. Understanding how boys and girls interact with different toys is critical, as play with traditionally masculine and feminine toys may look quite different. Blakemore and Centers (2005) asked adults to categorize over 120 toys by perceived gender association. Importantly, adults rated the gender neutral and moderately masculine toys to be more educationally valuable than feminine toys. The present study directly examines these perceptions by analyzing parent number talk elicitation with respect to the gendered toy categories constructed by Blakemore and Centers. The goal is to examine how parent number talk differs between different toys with respect to gender, such as feminine dolls versus gender neutral puzzles.
This study included 78 dyads of four-year old children (39 girls) and their parents (4 fathers) who participated in a larger study. Parent-child dyads were recorded playing freely at home, and the toys each dyad played with were coded as strongly feminine, moderately feminine, gender neutral, moderately masculine, or strongly masculine according to the Blakemore and Centers gender categorization system (see Table 1).The entire play session was coded as masculine (i.e., a combination of masculine and neutral toys), feminine (i.e., a combination of feminine and neutral toys), or gender neutral (i.e., only neutral toys). The video recordings were transcribed, and the amount of number talk for both parent and child were counted. Finally, parent math attitudes were assessed through five survey questions (i.e., “When I was in school I liked math”).
A series of Poisson regression models were estimated predicting parental number talk while controlling for the total number of words spoken, video length, family income and parent education. Parent number talk during feminine toy play was significantly lower than in both neutral and masculine toy play. Furthermore, number talk was less frequent in gendered activities overall, but this association was significantly moderated by child gender (see Table 2). Girls received significantly less parent number talk during play with feminine toys compared to neutral toys. In contrast, parent number talk was not significantly different for boys during gender neutral and masculine toy play, indicating that parent number talk may be independent of toy type for boys. Parent math attitudes were also positively associated with parent math talk for boys, but there was no association between parent math talk and math attitudes for girls. These findings suggest that feminine toys do not tend to elicit many math-related conversations compared with other toys, and gender neutral toys tend to elicit high amounts of number talk for preschool-aged girls.

Authors

• Sarah Gehman, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Leanne Elliott, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jyothirmayi Thippana, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melissa Libertus, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author