Which early number skills predict later maths and reading?
Preschoolers who understood what number words mean and could recognise written numerals did better in maths later, while early letter knowledge mattered more for later word reading.
Source
Predicting Children's Reading and Mathematics Achievement from Early Quantitative Knowledge and Domain-General Cognitive Abilities
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cohort — Longitudinal study of preschoolers assessed repeatedly across two preschool years and kindergarten; mixed-model regressions controlling IQ, executive function and parental education.
- N
- N=100 · 100 children in the final analytic sample, after excluding children who left, had very low IQ scores or missed multiple tasks.
- Population
- Children aged about 3 to 6 from a US Title I (at-risk) public preschool program in Missouri, recruited in two cohorts.
- Outcome
- Mathematics achievement (TEMA-3) across preschool; WIAT Numerical Operations and Word Reading at the end of kindergarten.
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
The researchers followed children from an at-risk public preschool program through two years of preschool and into kindergarten. They repeatedly gave the children a battery of number tasks (for example handing over a requested number of items, naming numerals, and judging which of two dot arrays had more), plus IQ, executive function and letter-recognition tests. They then used regression models to see which start-of-preschool skills predicted maths achievement during preschool and maths versus reading achievement at the end of kindergarten, controlling for parental education and general cognitive ability.
What they found
All the key number skills improved over preschool, and intelligence and executive function were tied mainly to early performance on those tasks. Understanding the cardinal meaning of number words and recognising numerals at the start of preschool predicted maths achievement, more strongly in the first year than the second. Early letter knowledge predicted kindergarten word reading more strongly than maths, while nonsymbolic dot-comparison accuracy predicted maths more strongly than reading; IQ did not predict kindergarten achievement once other factors were controlled.
The limits
What it doesn't show
The study is correlational, so it cannot show that teaching number-word meanings would cause better maths; the authors say experimental follow-ups are needed. Reading was measured much more thinly than maths (one letter-recognition task and one reading test), and phonemic awareness was not assessed. The sample came from a single preschool program in one US city, and ceiling effects on the number-word task by the end of preschool limit what the second-year results can show.
Key terms
- Cardinality
- Understanding that the last number word in a count names how many items are in the set; tested here with the give-a-number task.
- Approximate number system (ANS)
- An intuitive, non-verbal sense of quantity that lets people judge which of two collections is larger without counting.
- Symbolic vs nonsymbolic number knowledge
- Knowledge tied to number words and numerals versus knowledge about raw quantities such as dot arrays.
- Domain-general ability
- A broad cognitive capacity, such as intelligence or executive function, that supports learning across many subjects.
- Executive function
- Control processes like inhibiting a habitual response and switching between rules, measured here with a card-sorting task.
Flashcards
0 of 11 answers reviewed
Research intelligence for this paper
See its role on concept claims, tensions it is part of, placement history, and related discoveries.
Quiz yourself
Which measure best captured children's understanding of what number words mean?
Common questions
Does this mean preschools should drill numeral names?
Not directly. The results show that children who already knew numerals and number-word meanings did better later, but because nothing was manipulated, the study cannot prove that teaching these skills would cause the gains.
Why did IQ not predict kindergarten achievement?
Once specific early skills like letter and number knowledge were in the model, IQ added little; the authors suggest general abilities matter most when material is new and fade as domain-specific knowledge builds up.
Is the dot-comparison (ANS) task useful for predicting maths?
It predicted kindergarten maths somewhat more than reading, but its link to preschool maths achievement was weak, fitting a wider literature where symbolic number knowledge is the stronger predictor.
More on Mathematics education