Relational language influences young children’s number relation skills

Abstract

Relational language is thought to influence mathematical skills. This study examines the association between relational language and number relation skills—knowledge of cardinal, ordinal, and spatial principles—among 104 U.S. kindergartners (5.9 years; 44% boys; 37% White, 25% Black, 14% Asian, 24% other) in the 2017–2018 academic year. Controlling for general verbal knowledge, executive function, and counting and number identification skills, relational language predicted later number relation skills, specifically number line estimation, β = .30. Relational language did not differentially predict number line estimation performance in children with low or high number relation skills, likely due to the restricted ranges of data within subgroups. Number relation skills, specifically number line estimation and number ordering, may be a pathway between relational language and mathematical skills.

Children’s use of egocentric reference frames in spatial language is related to their numerical magnitude understanding

“…Mastery of spatial language terms thus does not seem to be of primary relevance for grasping absolute numerical magnitudes or positions of numbers in the number sequence, at least not in the age group investigated in this study. Instead, its relevance for relative numerical magnitude understanding is also underlined by the findings of a recent study showing that relational language skills are associated with number relation skills (Chan et al, 2022).…”

“…However, it should be noted that no general language or cognitive skills were measured as control variables in the present study. Associations between spatial language skills and numerical skills have, however, been reported to be significant in previous studies after controlling for general language or cognitive skills (see e.g., Bower et al, 2020;Chan et al, 2022). As such, we chose to assess more specific numerical and spatial control variables.…”

“…A training study even revealed that 3-to 5-year-old children who participated in a dialogic reading intervention that involved talking about pre-determined questions focusing on quantitative and spatial language showed significantly enhanced numerical skills compared to a businessas-usual control group (Purpura et al, 2017). Moreover, in a recent longitudinal study (with a pre-and post-test interval of 6 weeks), Chan et al (2022) examined associations of 5to 6-year-old's relational language (i.e., combining quantitative, spatial as well as temporal contexts such as more-less, topbottom, and begin-end) and their number relation skills, as assessed by two tasks on cardinal relations among numbers (i.e., number comparison and set relation), one task on ordinal relations (i.e., number ordering), and one task on numberspace mapping (i.e., number line estimation). The authors found that relational language skills predicted later number relations skills, in particular for children's performance in number line estimation and even after controlling for vocabulary, executive functions, but also counting and number identification skills.…”

Numerical development in preschool: Examining potential mediators of children’s approximate number system and mathematics achievement.

“…Mathematical language is also distinct from specific mathematical content, such as the meaning of individual number words (e.g., cardinality; Peng et al, 2020; Purpura et al, 2019). Previous research has shown that children’s mathematical language performance relates to their numerical skills and broader mathematics achievement in preschool (Chan et al, 2019; Hassinger-Das et al, 2015; Hornburg et al, 2018; Purpura & Logan, 2015). For example, Hornburg et al (2018) showed that 3- to 6-year-old preschoolers’ mathematical language significantly predicted their performance on tasks of verbal counting, numeral knowledge, cardinality, and story problems, controlling for age, gender, and parental education.…”

Combining Numerical Relational and Fundamental Motor Skills to Improve Preschoolers’ Early Numeracy: A Pilot Intervention Study

“…One possible explanation for the close association between FMS and the learning of academic and cognitive skills is the fact that especially complex FMS tasks activate the same brain areas as complex cognitive tasks, resulting in a co-activation of these brain areas (Diamond, 2000 ). Furthermore, these effects may be mediated through an increase in executive functions—inhibition in particular—following FMS practice, which might then be reflected as improved cognitive and academic skills (e.g., ability to inhibit irrelevant information during given tasks; Chan et al, 2022 ; Pesce et al, 2021 ). In light of previous research, it is plausible that combining the learning of EN with FMS practice may result in long-term improvements in EN.…”