ABSTRACT

Differences in children’s math knowledge emerge as early as the start of kindergarten, and persist throughout schooling. Previous research implicates the importance of early parent number talk in the development of math competency. Yet we understand little about the factors that relate to variation in early parent number talk. The current study examined the relation of parent math anxiety and family socioeconomic status (SES) to parent number talk with children under the age of three (n = 36 dyads). For the first time, we show preliminary evidence that parent math anxiety (MA) predicts the amount of number talk children hear at home, beyond differences accounted for by SES. We also found a significant SES by parent MA interaction such that parent MA was predictive of higher-SES parents’ number talk but not that of lower-SES parents. Furthermore, we found that these relations were specific to parents’ cardinal number talk (but not counting), which has been shown to be particularly important in children’s math development.

摘要

儿童数学知识的差异早在幼儿园开始就出现，并持续到整个学校。先前的研究表明，早期父母数字谈话在数学能力发展中的重要性。然而，我们对与早期父母人数谈话中的变化有关的因素知之甚少。目前的研究调查了父母数学焦虑和家庭社会经济地位 (SES) 与父母与三岁以下儿童（n = 36 对）交谈的关系。我们首次展示了初步证据表明，父母数学焦虑 (MA) 可以预测孩子在家中听到的谈话数量，超出了 SES 所解释的差异。我们还通过父母 MA 的互动发现了显着的 SES，因此父母 MA 可以预测高 SES 父母的数字谈话，但不能预测低 SES 父母的谈话。此外，