COGNITIVE SKILLS AS PREDICTORS OF ARITHMETIC ACHIEVEMENT OF 3th AND 4th GRADERS

Abstract

This article presents a study that aimed to identify general and specific cognitive skills as predictors of arithmetic achievement. Through a quantitative analysis, we evaluated 127 students in the 3rd and 4th grades on the following skills: working memory, phonemic awareness, reading comprehension, number transcoding, number line estimation, and quantitative reasoning. We assessed these cognitive skills in two moments, at the beginning and the end of the school year. In this second moment, we also assessed the students' arithmetic achievement. The results specifically indicated a direct influence of number transcoding, quantitative reasoning, and phonemic awareness on arithmetic performance. In addition, the findings showed that number transcoding is a mediator in the relation between quantitative reasoning and phonemic awareness with arithmetic performance. Thus, we emphasize the importance of general and specific skills for students' arithmetic performance. Furthermore, we highlight the prioritization of teaching based on the understanding of the number system and the relations between amounts (quantitative reasoning) for arithmetic learning, as well as for preventing future mathematical difficulties.