Building Bridges to Math Success: Exploring Children’s Flexible Attention to Numerical and Spatial Magnitudes

Building Bridges to Math Success: Exploring Children’s Flexible Attention to Numerical and Spatial Magnitudes

    Presenter(s)

    Deja Richardson

    Comments

    11:00-12:00, Kennedy Union Boll Theatre

    Description

    The study will analyze how children in early childhood engage with number books and how they influence mathematical abilities such as flexible attention to magnitudes (FAM) and executive functioning. It is hypothesized that the number of books consisting of mathematical language will lead to an increase in math ability. We will also explore the correlations between children’s engagement with the books and their outcomes. It is suggested that number books will engage children using mathematical language and real-world settings. This study will be a pretest-intervention-posttest design, where 40 participants between the ages of three and five years old recruited from daycare centers and preschools in the Dayton area will complete 6 one-on-one sessions with an experimenter in their school. The pretest will consist of the following assessments: Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Early Cognitive and Academic Development (WJ ECAD) Number Sense, WJ ECAD Picture Vocabulary, Give-N, and Minnesota Executive Function Scale (MEFS). The intervention will involve participants, who will be randomly assigned to one of two conditions, completing 4 reading sessions with an experimenter. The mixed condition involves number books with questions about size and number language, while the control condition will have questions about special colors. Each condition has two book settings, a farm, and a restaurant. The post-test will include the FAM Task and WJ ECAD Number Sense assessments. The study will analyze results from the book trials and assessments used in the pre and post-tests using ANCOVA analyses that control for pre-test and demographic covariates.

    Publication Date

    4-23-2025

    Project Designation

    Honors Thesis

    Primary Advisor

    Dorian Borbonus, Mary Catherine Wagner

    Primary Advisor's Department

    Psychology

    Keywords

    Stander Symposium, College of Arts and Sciences

    Institutional Learning Goals

    Diversity; Community; Scholarship

    Building Bridges to Math Success: Exploring Children’s Flexible Attention to Numerical and Spatial Magnitudes

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