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Nonsymbolic and symbolic magnitude comparison skills as longitudinal predictors of mathematical achievement
journal contribution
posted on 2016-11-08, 16:11 authored by Iro Xenidou-DervouIro Xenidou-Dervou, Dylan Molenaar, Daniel Ansari, Menno van der Schoot, Ernest C.D.M. van LieshoutWhat developmental roles do nonsymbolic (e.g., dot arrays) and symbolic (i.e., Arabic
numerals) magnitude comparison skills play in children’s mathematics? In the literature, one
notices several gaps and contradictory findings. We assessed a large sample in kindergarten,
grade 1 and 2 on two well-known nonsymbolic and symbolic magnitude comparison measures.
We also assessed children’s initial IQ and developing Working Memory (WM) capacities.
Results demonstrated that symbolic and nonsymbolic comparison had different developmental trajectories; the first underwent larger developmental improvements. Both skills were important longitudinal predictors of children’s future mathematical achievement above and beyond IQ and WM. Nonsymbolic comparison was predictive in kindergarten. Symbolic comparison, however,
was consistently a stronger predictor of future mathematics compared to nonsymbolic, and its predictive power at the early stages was even comparable to that of IQ. Furthermore, results bring forth methodological implications regarding the role of different types of magnitude comparison measures.
Funding
This research was conducted as part of a broader NWO (National Dutch Organization for Scientific Research) funded project [grant number: PROO 411-07-111].
History
School
- Science
Department
- Mathematics Education Centre
Published in
Learning and InstructionCitation
XENIDOU-DERVOU, I. ... et al, 2017. Nonsymbolic and symbolic magnitude comparison skills as longitudinal predictors of mathematical achievement. Learning and Instruction, 50, pp.1-13.Publisher
© ElsevierVersion
- 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
2016-11-06Publication date
2017Notes
This paper was published in the journal Learning and Instruction and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2016.11.001.ISSN
0959-4752Publisher version
Language
- en
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