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Cognitive predictors of children’s development in mathematics achievement: a latent growth modeling approach
journal contribution
posted on 2018-03-23, 12:03 authored by Iro Xenidou-DervouIro Xenidou-Dervou, Johannes E.H. Van Luit, Evelyn H. Kroesbergen, Ilona Friso-van den Bos, Lisa M. Jonkman, Menno van der Schoot, Ernest C.D.M. van LieshoutResearch has identified various domain-general and domain-specific cognitive abilities as predictors of children’s individual differences in mathematics achievement. However, research into the predictors of children’s individual growth rates, i.e., between-person differences in within-person change, in mathematics achievement is scarce. We assessed 334 children’s domain-general and mathematics-specific early cognitive abilities and their general mathematics achievement longitudinally across four time-points within the 1st and 2nd grade of primary school. As expected, a constellation of multiple cognitive abilities contributed to the children’s starting level of mathematical success. Specifically, latent growth modeling revealed that WM abilities, IQ, counting skills, nonsymbolic and symbolic approximate arithmetic and comparison skills explained individual differences in the children’s initial status on a curriculum-based general mathematics achievement test. Surprisingly, however, only one out of all the assessed cognitive abilities was a unique predictor of the children’s individual growth rates in mathematics achievement: their performance in the symbolic approximate addition task. In this task, children were asked to estimate the sum of two large numbers and decide if this estimated sum was smaller or larger compared to a third number. Our findings demonstrate the importance of multiple domain-general and mathematics-specific cognitive skills for identifying children at risk of struggling with mathematics and highlight the significance of early approximate arithmetic skills for the development of one’s mathematical success. We argue the need for more research focus on explaining children’s individual growth rates in mathematics achievement.
Funding
This work was funded by the NWO (National Dutch Organization for Scientific Research) under Grant number PROO 411 07 111
History
School
- Science
Department
- Mathematics Education Centre
Published in
Developmental ScienceCitation
XENIDOU-DERVOU, I. ... et al, 2018. Cognitive predictors of children’s development in mathematics achievement: a latent growth modeling approach. Developmental Science, 21(6): e12671Publisher
© John Wiley & Sons LtdVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2018-03-06Publication date
2018Notes
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: XENIDOU-DERVOU, I. ... et al, 2018. Cognitive predictors of children’s development in mathematics achievement: a latent growth modeling approach. Developmental Science, 21(6): e12671, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12671. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.ISSN
1363-755XPublisher version
Language
- en