Mathematical Skills in 3- and 5-Year-Olds with Spina Bifida and Their Typically Developing Peers: A Longitudinal Approach

Abstract

Preschoolers with spina bifida (SB) were compared to typically developing (TD) children on tasks tapping mathematical knowledge at 36 months (n = 102) and 60 months of age (n = 98). The group with SB had difficulty compared to TD peers on all mathematical tasks except for transformation on quantities in the subitizable range. At 36 months, vocabulary knowledge, visual–spatial, and fine motor abilities predicted achievement on a measure of informal math knowledge in both groups. At 60 months of age, phonological awareness, visual–spatial ability, and fine motor skill were uniquely and differentially related to counting knowledge, oral counting, object-based arithmetic skills, and quantitative concepts. Importantly, the patterns of association between these predictors and mathematical performance were similar across the groups. A novel finding is that fine motor skill uniquely predicted object-based arithmetic abilities in both groups, suggesting developmental continuity in the neurocognitive correlates of early object-based and later symbolic arithmetic problem solving. Models combining 36-month mathematical ability and these language-based, visual–spatial, and fine motor abilities at 60 months accounted for considerable variance on 60-month informal mathematical outcomes. Results are discussed with reference to models of mathematical development and early identification of risk in preschoolers with neurodevelopmental disorder.

Longitudinal mediators of achievement in mathematics and reading in typical and atypical development

“…Weak phonological processing early in life could have implications for early and later mathematical development. Although children with SBM have average or better word decoding skills by school-age, there is some evidence that phonological awareness may show delayed development in the preschool years (Barnes et al, 2011). …”

“…The use of fingers may also serve to “offload” some of the cognitive/memory load associated with making transformations (+ and −) on small numbers (Costa et al, 2011). SBM is associated with difficulties with fine motor skills including bimanual coordination (Lomax-Bream, Barnes, Copeland, Taylor, & Landry, 2007; Dennis & Barnes, 2010), and fine motor skills are significant unique predictors of nonverbal addition and subtraction problem solving in both typically developing preschoolers and in preschoolers with SBM (Barnes et al, 2011). …”

Early numeracy skills in preschool-aged children: a review of neurocognitive findings and implications for assessment and intervention

“…Bailey, Watts, Littlefield, & Geary, 2014; Purpura & Logan, 2015). In our longitudinal studies of SBM (Barnes et al, 2011), for example, the ability to detect counting errors, to count orally, and to perform nonverbal arithmetic problems at 60 months of age was best predicted by a combination of 36-month early number knowledge (as measured by the first few items on the TEMA) and neurocognitive factors (e.g., visual spatial, fine motor, and language abilities). Although the combination of predictors varied somewhat for counting and nonverbal arithmetic, the factors that predicted early numeracy in children at high risk for MLD (the children with SBM) were the same as those that predicted early numeracy in the typically developing control group.…”

“…Findings from these studies suggest that children with low math achievement scores understand basic counting principles, such as cardinality and ordinality but have difficulty understanding unessential features of counting such as the idea that counting of objects can proceed in any order (Geary, Hamson, & Hoard, 2000; Geary, Hoard, & Hamson, 1999). Our longitudinal work with children with SBM and their typically developing peers (Barnes et al, 2011) shows that difficulties in symbolic aspects of arithmetic are discernable early in development as early as 36 months of age, children with SBM were significantly less able than their typically developing peers to answer the entry-level questions on the Test of Early Mathematics Ability (TEMA-2; Ginsburg & Baroody, 1990), which involve counting small sets of objects, showing the number of fingers corresponding to spoken number words, and understanding cardinality (Barnes et al, 2011). At 60 months of age; these same children with SBM were unable to count as high as their typically developing peers and they were also less skilled than their peers at detecting incorrect counts by the puppet in the counting task described above.…”

“…Phonological awareness, more so than measures of vocabulary or word meaning, tap the quality of lexical representations (perhaps because they require fine distinctions between phonological representations such as cat vs. car or cat vs. rat) and is related to young children’s sequential counting skills (Barnes et al, 2011; Koponen, Salmi, Eklund, & Aro, 2013; Krajewski & Schneider, 2009; Soto-Calvo, Simmons, Willis, & Adams 2015). A longitudinal study conducted by Krajewski and Schnieder (2009) followed children from preschool to third grade and examined the relation of phonological awareness to the development of early numeracy skills.…”