The Development of Quantitative Competencies in Preschool Children

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This project is a five-year longitudinal study designed to examine early foundations of formal mathematical learning. Approximately, 250 children in Missouri will be assessed twice per year from preschool through first grade. Specific competencies to be measured include number, number relations, and number operations as well as language, executive function, attention, IQ, and social behavior. Symbolic and non-symbolic quantitative skills are considered. Data collected on this project will link to the Missouri Longitudinal Study of Mathematical Development and Disability.Competence in arithmetic and basic algebra has been shown to be strongly related to employability, wages, and on-the-job productivity. Children who begin school behind their peers in mathematical competencies tend to stay behind throughout their schooling. The goal of this project is to conduct a longitudinal study with at-risk 3 year olds to improve the field?s understanding of the development of early numeracy development in young children and its relation to school mathematics outcomes. The project hopes to shed light on how domain general executive functions, nonverbal intelligence, and verbal intelligence interact with quantitative knowledge to lead to math achievement at the end of kindergarten.