December 1, 2023
"Math activities are differentially related to children's math achievement, such that children with stronger number knowledge seem to benefit more from these math activities at home than those with less advanced number knowledge."
Key Takeaways
- The benefits of playing a math board game is seen only among children with greater inherent number knowledge
- Engagement in math activities is associated with math performance only for children with stronger number knowledge
- Maths activities may achieve the greatest benefits when tailored to children's current skill levels
Children's early math skills are essential for later academic success. Evidence suggests that the home math environment, created through math-related activities and games, can help young children develop math skills. However, in this line of research, opportunity and propensity factors are typically "viewed as a result of antecedent factors—characteristics of families, homes, and communities which present a contextual backdrop for children's development and include constructs such as parents' education, math ability, or beliefs about education."
Alex Silver and her colleagues at the LRDC investigate this topic in their new research project "The Benefits of Math Activities Depend on the Skills Children Bring to the Table." They evaluate whether the impacts of math activities are universally beneficial regardless of whether they are naturally occurring or experimentally manipulated, or whether they vary systematically depending on a child's personal characteristics and inherent math skills.
This project comprises two central studies, the first of which uses both a cross-sectional and an experimental approach to assess the impact of a child's own propensity on their engagement with math activities and a math board game. Within this approach, the researchers use a sample of 124 children, between the ages of 3 years and 9 months to 4 years old, to evaluate whether math achievement is influenced by three underlying cognitive capacities: children's number knowledge, inhibitory control, and language abilities.
The project's second study uses a sample of 76 children, between the ages of 3 years and 9 months to 3 years and 11 months, and random assignment to evaluate whether playing with a number-related board game with a parent leads to greater math abilities, and whether these benefits are influenced by the same three underlying cognitive capacities outlined in the first study.
While frequency of math activities was found unrelated with children's math achievement when the cognitive capacities were taken into account, the first study concluded that children's number knowledge significantly controlled the impacts of math activities on their math performance.
Meanwhile, the second study observed a positive correlation between children's number knowledge and the anticipated benefit (on future math abilities) of playing the given number-related board game with a parent. Although there were no significant differences in math scores across the children randomly assigned to different board game options, and no meaningful differences found across inhibitory control or language levels, notable impacts were seen among the children who exhibited greater number knowledge.
Overall, this research project highlights the importance of tailoring math activities to children's current skill levels, and suggests that "math activities may be most beneficial for the development of math skills when children already have some number knowledge." However, it remains unclear the extent to which these benefits may decrease over time, how conventional board games may be modified to support learners with less inherent math skills, and how parental involvement in math activities influences the skills children receive from math engagement.
Silver, A. M., Elliott, L., Ribner, A. D., & Libertus, M. E. (2023). The benefits of math activities depend on the skills children bring to the table. Developmental Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001637