Pre-school predictors of early arithmetic skills: a two year longitudinal study
The purpose of this thesis was to examine longitudinal predictors of children’s early arithmetic abilities with a particular focus on the relation to the approximate number system (ANS), language and numeracy skills as well as background measures of cognitive abilities. This longitudinal study assessed children five times over a 25-month period beginning in nursery classes and continuing to the end of Year One (the first complete year of formal schooling). The thesis investigated the concurrent and longitudinal predictive importance of ANS, numeracy, language and cognitive abilities in children’s arithmetic development using structural equation modelling. Path models found different concurrent predictors of arithmetic at each time point and only transcoding, the ability to translate between the verbal number code and the Arabic numeral, was a consistently recurring predictor. Furthermore, children’s nonverbal intelligence and their understanding of language specific to mathematics related significantly to early arithmetic (pre-school) whereas children’s magnitude comparison skills were significantly associated with arithmetic scores in Year One. The longitudinal analysis showed that transcoding was the only unique predictor of arithmetic and neither ANS nor language and cognitive skills were significant independent contributors to the prediction of children’s arithmetic abilities 25 months later.