Gender Differences in Social Mastery Motivation and Its Relationships to Vocabulary Knowledge,Behavioral Self-Regulation,and Socioemotional Skills

The present study investigated gender differences in social mastery motivation, vocabulary knowledge, behavioral self-regulation, and socioemotional skills and examined the relationships among this knowledge and these skills by gender. Participants were 134 Chinese children (68 boys, M age = 3.80; 66 girls, M age = 3.89) and their parents recruited through local kindergartens’ parent groups. The children were administered measures of social mastery motivation, vocabulary knowledge, behavioral self-regulation, and nonverbal intelligence. Parents reported their education level and children’s socioemotional skills. Research Findings: Results revealed that boys exhibited more social mastery interactions than girls, and girls showed better behavioral self-regulation and socioemotional skills than boys. Girls with higher social mastery interaction frequency demonstrated better vocabulary knowledge and socioemotional skills, whereas boys with higher social mastery interaction frequency showed lower behavioral self-regulation. Boys, who showed more positive affect during social mastery interactions, tended to have better expressive vocabulary, which facilitated their behavioral self-regulation. Practice or Policy: Findings highlight social mastery motivation as a potential factor that facilitates children’s early development, but it may contribute to boys and girls in different ways.     

An international perspective of early number sense: Identifying components predictive of difficulties in early mathematics achievement

Abstract

From preschool to high school, number sense is included as an important outcome in mathematics syllabi. It is a term associated with the development of concepts and skills in mathematics and as such appears frequently in the teaching literature. However number sense is a term yet to be operationally defined. The present study used a modified Delphi procedure to determine the level of agreement amongst six early mathematics experts from Britain, Europe and the United States, with respect to a variety of components of early number sense. The results of this study are discussed in relation to a similar Australasian study and the emerging literature on early number sense assessment. This study revealed some components of number sense worthy of further investigation in relation to early mathematical achievement but also confirmed a lack of consensus on what exactly constitutes early number sense.     

A participatory approach to the identification of measures of number sense in children prior to school entry

The research reported in this paper used a modified Delphi procedure in an attempt to establish a consensus on tasks proposed to assess components of number sense identified as essential for early mathematics success by a broad range of academics with expertise in the area of early mathematics. Tasks included as measures of these components were based on assessment tasks developed by early mathematics researchers. Eighteen questionnaires were returned by academics from Australia, the UK, New Zealand, The Netherlands and the USA, all with published work in the areas of early mathematics and/or number sense. Both the proposed components and tasks in the questionnaires were limited to the number domain. The study revealed considerable agreement with a number of the proposed tasks and thus provided a way forward for the development of an early number sense assessment to be trialled with young children prior to their first year of formal schooling.     

False Belief, Emotion Understanding, and Social Skills Among Head Start and Non-Head Start Children

The present study investigated relationships among false belief, emotion understanding, and social skills with 60 3- to 5-year-olds (29 boys, 31girls) from Head Start and two other preschools. Children completed language, false belief, and emotion understanding measures; parents and teachers evaluated children's social skills. Children's false belief performance related to their understanding of their friend's emotions and to teacher's ratings of social skills. Aspects of emotion understanding related to social skills. Head Start (n =30) and non-Head Start preschoolers (n = 30) performed similarly on social skills and emotion understanding measures, however, non-Head Start children performed significantly better on false belief tasks than Head Start children. Results demonstrate the importance of including diverse groups of children in studies of social cognition.     

False Belief,Emotion Understanding,and Social Skills Among Head Start and Non-Head Start Children

The present study investigated relationships among false belief, emotion understanding, and social skills with 60 3- to 5-year-olds (29 boys, 31girls) from Head Start and two other preschools. Children completed language, false belief, and emotion understanding measures; parents and teachers evaluated children's social skills. Children's false belief performance related to their understanding of their friend's emotions and to teacher's ratings of social skills. Aspects of emotion understanding related to social skills. Head Start (n =30) and non-Head Start preschoolers (n = 30) performed similarly on social skills and emotion understanding measures, however, non-Head Start children performed significantly better on false belief tasks than Head Start children. Results demonstrate the importance of including diverse groups of children in studies of social cognition.     

Prenatal testosterone,visual-spatial memory,and numerical skills in young children

Lateralization of the brain is strongly influenced by prenatal androgens, with differential exposure thought to account for cognitive sex differences. This study investigated sex and individual differences and relationships between 2D:4D (the ratio of the 2nd to 4th digit [digit ratio] as a proxy indicator of prenatal testosterone exposure), visual-spatial memory, and numerical skills in 5-year-old children. No sex differences were found in any of the numerical or visual-spatial tasks. Visual-spatial memory was positively correlated with arithmetic score. Girls with a lower (more masculinised) 2D:4D had better number sense and visual-spatial skills, whilst boys with lower 2D:4D had better arithmetic skills. This suggests that prenatal testosterone exposure may have differential effects on the visual-spatial and numerical skills of girls and boys.     

Effortful Control and Academic Achievement in Rural China

Research Findings: This study investigated the relationships between effortful control and early literacy and mathematics achievement. A total of 181 children (85 girls and 96 boys) from rural China were assessed when they were in Grades 1 and 2. Path analyses controlling for maternal education indicated that effortful control at the beginning of Grade 1 predicted incremental achievement in literacy and mathematics at the end of Grade 1 and mathematics achievement at the end of Grade 2. Growth in effortful control during Grade 1 also contributed significantly to the prediction of both literacy and mathematics achievement at the end of Grade 2. Although girls performed significantly better than boys in literacy achievement, gender did not moderate the relationships between effortful control and literacy and mathematics achievement. Practice or Policy: Children’s effortful control appears to be an important predictor of early literacy and mathematics achievement. Findings suggest that children’s effortful control should be fostered during the preschool and early years of formal schooling, and this can be done in both home and school contexts.     

Defining Early Number Sense: A participatory Australian study

Recent publications in Australia focus on “number sense” as an important component of mathematics instruction. The current study attempted to tap into local expert knowledge in the area of early mathematics in an effort to establish a consensus on which skills reflect the number sense typically acquired by school entry. A modified Delphi procedure was employed whereby participants were asked to indicate their level of agreement with a variety of skills as indicators of number sense in young children. The study raised questions about the efficacy of this type of participatory research when used in relation to an ill‐defined construct. It also revealed a lack of consensus among the group of academics who agreed to participate in the study.     

Socioeconomic and gender group differences in early literacy skills: a multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis approach

Socioeconomic status and gender are important demographic variables that strongly relate to academic achievement. This study examined the early literacy skills differences between 4 sociodemographic groups, namely, boys ineligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRL), girls ineligible for FRL, boys eligible for FRL, and girls eligible for FRL. Data on kindergarteners (N = 462) were analysed using multiple-group confirmatory factory analysis. Early literacy skill differences between boys and girls are more nuanced than previously reported; subsidy status and gender interact. Both boys and girls from high-poverty households performed significantly lower than the girls from low-poverty households in alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and spelling. There were gender gaps, with a female advantage, among children from high-poverty households in alphabet knowledge and spelling and among children from low-poverty households in alphabet knowledge. These results highlight the importance of employing methodologically sound techniques to ascertain group differences in componential early literacy skills.     

Early home learning support and home mathematics environment as predictors of children's mathematical skills between age 4 and 6: A longitudinal analysis using video observations and survey data

This large-scale and longitudinal study examines early home support for learning, formal/informal home mathematics activities, and their associations with children's mathematical development between age two and six. Data were collected in Germany between 2012 and 2018, N = 1184 (49% girls, 51% boys), and 15% of children had parents with a migration history. Linguistically and mathematically stimulating, attentive, and responsive parent–child engagement at age two predicted children's mathematical skills at age four and six (small-to-medium effect size). Both formal and informal home mathematical activities at age five predicted children's mathematical skills at age six (small effect size), and were associated with children's prior mathematics attainment. This study also provides indicators where individual differences and social circumstances are relevant to understanding different early mathematics outcomes.     

Mathematical thinking of kindergarten boys and girls: similar achievement, different contributing processes

The objective of this study was to examine gender differences in the relations between verbal, spatial, mathematics, and teacher–child mathematics interaction variables. Kindergarten children (N = 80) were videotaped playing games that require mathematical reasoning in the presence of their teachers. The children’s mathematics, spatial, and verbal skills and the teachers’ mathematical communication were assessed. No gender differences were found between the mathematical achievements of the boys and girls, or between their verbal and spatial skills. However, mathematics performance was related to boys’ spatial reasoning and to girls’ verbal skills, suggesting that they use different processes for solving mathematical problems. Furthermore, the boys’ levels of spatial and verbal skills were not found to be related, whereas they were significantly related for girls. The mathematical communication level provided in teacher–child interactions was found to be related to girls’ but not to boys’ mathematics performance, suggesting that boys may need other forms of mathematics communication and teaching.     

The Stability of Individual Differences in Basic Mathematics‐Related Skills in Young Children at the Start of Formal Education

The current study investigated the development of children's performance on tasks that have been suggested to underlie early mathematics skills, including measures of cardinality, ordinality, and intelligence. Eighty‐seven children were tested in their first (T1) and second (T2) school year (at ages 5 and 6). Children's performance on all tasks demonstrated good reliability and significantly improved with age. Correlational analyses revealed that performance on some mathematics‐related tasks were nonsignificantly correlated between T1 and T2 (number line and number comparison), showing that these skills are relatively unstable. Detailed analyses also indicated that the way children solve these tasks show qualitative changes over time. By contrast, children's performance on measures of intelligence and nonnumerical ordering abilities were strongly correlated between T1 and T2. Additionally, ordering skills also showed moderate to strong correlations with counting procedures both cross‐sectionally and longitudinally. These results suggest that, initially, mathematics skills strongly rely on nonmathematical abilities.     

Boys Outperforming Girls: an 8‐year cross‐sectional study of attainment and self‐esteem in Year 6

This 8‐year cross‐sectional study measured the self‐esteem, reading and mathematical attainments of eight cohorts of Year 6 children. A total of 1488 children (737 boys, 751 girls) in five randomly selected primary schools within one Local Education Authority (LEA) comprised the sample to which the Lawseq questionnaire (Lawrence, 1982), Mathematics 11 (NFER, 1985) and the Primary Reading Test Level 2 (France, 1981) were administered. Differences in attainment related to gender were found in mathematics, but not in reading, with boys significantly outperforming girls (at the 5% level). The percentage of boys who scored significantly above the mean in mathematics and significantly below the mean in reading contrasted with the girls’ more compressed scores in the middle range. The national test data for Cohorts 7 and 8 followed the national pattern with girls outperforming boys. Boys had significantly higher self‐esteem than the girls (at the 0.1% level). Correlation coefficients between Lawseq and mathematics and reading mean scores for boys and girls were all significant at the 0.1% level. The findings are discussed in relation to the current debate concerning the low performance of boys.     

The effects of educational computer game on low-performing children’s early numeracy skills – an intervention study in a preschool setting

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of an educational computer game, Lola’s World, on low-performing children’s early numeracy skills. Four preschools with 33 children from families of low socio-economic status (M _age = 5.5 years) took part in this study. Of the 33 children, 23 were split randomly into two groups: an intervention group playing a numeracy game (Lola’s World) and an active control group playing an early reading skills game (Lola’s ABC party). The remaining 10 children served as a passive control group. The intervention phase lasted three weeks, during which time the children played the games daily for about 15 min. The children’s numeracy skills were measured using the Early Numeracy Test. Those children (n = 22) who exhibited low numeracy (i.e. at risk for learning difficulties in mathematics) were included in the analyses. The three groups did not differ in terms of parental educational levels or home languages. They were comparable in terms of nonverbal reasoning and the amount of time spent playing. The Lola’s World group improved its early numeracy performance from pretest to post-test. No between-group differences were found. The results are discussed in relation to providing game-based support for low-performing preschoolers.     

Links Between Preschoolers' Behavioral Regulation and School Readiness Skills: The Role of Child Gender

Research Findings: We examined relations among preschoolers' behavioral regulation, gender, and school readiness outcomes in preacademic and classroom skills using a sample of South Korean preschoolers aged 3–5 (N = 229). Behavioral regulation was assessed using a direct measure, the Head–Toes–Knees–Shoulders task, which requires children to switch rules by responding in the opposite way to 4 different oral commands. Results demonstrated nonsignificant gender differences in behavioral regulation and academic skills but significant gender differences in classroom work-related skills and social skills, with higher scores for girls. Multilevel path modeling revealed that behavioral regulation predicted none of the preacademic skills and classroom behaviors after child age, gender, verbal intelligence, maternal education, and classroom nesting were controlled. However, there was an interaction effect of behavioral regulation and gender for early reading; the contribution of behavioral regulation to early reading was positive and stronger for boys. Practice or Policy: These results suggest that behavioral regulation is not an overall strong predictor of school readiness in South Korean children. Early educators need to support the development of behavioral regulation skills, especially for boys, as these skills may work as an important path to school readiness when children lack other classroom social strategies and resources.     

Behavior Regulation and Early Math and Vocabulary Knowledge in German Preschool Children

Research Findings: Behavior regulation, including paying attention, remembering instructions, and controlling action, contributes to children's successful adaptation to and functioning in preschool and school settings. This study examined the development of behavior regulation in early childhood and its potential contribution to individual differences in children's early knowledge (mathematics and vocabulary). Sixty German preschool children were administered a direct observational measure of behavior regulation, the Head-to-Toes Task, and a standardized test to assess early mathematics and vocabulary. Results revealed significant gains in behavior regulation between of 3 and 4 years of age. Moreover, early gender differences were found, with girls outperforming boys at age 4. Behavior regulation was significantly related to performance on the academic tasks, but the pathways to math and vocabulary knowledge differed. Practice or Policy: Discussion focuses on the role of behavior regulation in early academic achievement.     

A longitudinal analysis of sex differences in math and spatial skills in primary school age children

We report on a longitudinal study designed to assess possible sex differences in math achievement, math ability, and math-related tasks during the primary school age years. Participants included over 200 children from one public school district. Annual assessments included measures of math ability, math calculation achievement scores, rapid naming and decoding tasks, visual perception tests, visual motor tasks, and reading skills. During select years of the study we also administered tests of counting and math facts skills. We examined whether girls or boys were overrepresented among the bottom or top performers on any of these tasks, relative to their peers, and whether growth rates or predictors of math-related skills differed for boys and girls. Our findings support the notion that sex differences in math are minimal or nonexistent on standardized psychometric tests routinely given in assessments of primary school age children. There was no persistent finding suggesting a male or female advantage in math performance overall, during any single year of the study, or in any one area of math or spatial skills. Growth rates for all skills, and early correlates of later math performance, were comparable for boys and girls. The findings fail to support either persistent or emerging sex differences on non-specialized math ability measures during the primary school age years.     

Developing a Scale of Adaptive Behavior for Young Chinese Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

The purpose of the present study was to develop and evaluate a scale to measure adaptive behavior skills in Chinese children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participants were 121 young children (M = 55.18 months, SD = 0.18 months) with a formal diagnosis of ASD (73% male). Psychometric evaluation indicated that the reliability and validity of this scale were good. Furthermore, independent t‐tests revealed that boys demonstrated better adaptive behavior skills than girls. The present findings suggest that the scale is a valid measure of adaptive behavior skills in Chinese children with ASD.     

Occupational Therapy in Preschools: A Synthesis of Current Knowledge

This paper presents a synthesis of current knowledge about occupational therapy in preschools (for 3–6 year olds) in order to provide a better understanding of this field of practice and to guide the implementation or programming of this service. In the literature, occupational therapy in preschools has been documented mainly in the USA. Results revealed that this service helped all children, with and without difficulties, to improve their skills, especially fine motor and graphomotor skills, and their participation in educational and daily living activities. Occupational therapy also had positive effects on teachers, parents and services. A service delivery model based on Response-to-Intervention or collaborative model should guide the implementation or programming of occupational therapy in preschools, with the focus on prevention/health promotion, screening and early intervention as well as school inclusion and success. Future studies are needed to determine the best intervention approaches and methods to improve children’s motor skills and self-regulation in inclusive preschool settings.     

Sex Differences in Spatial Competence: the ability of young children to map ‘primed’ unfamiliar environments

Abstract This paper reports on a study set up to investigate the effects of gender related differences in home range behaviour on the acquision of spatial and environmental skills amongst a group of children aged 8 to 11. The population was divided to form two groups (A and B) of similar sex composition and environmental experience. The children were informed that the aim of the project was to construct a map of an unfamiliar area which they were to visit. The two groups were ‘primed’ about their task in different ways, with children in Group B undertaking a slightly more complex exercise. The results show that whilst ‘priming’ has the effect of reducing disjunction between the spatial capabilities of boys and girls on simpler tasks, when the exercise is complicated boys do much better than girls in all but one of the spatial assessments. Such evidence lends further support to those who argue that the more extensive movements of boys through the environment leads to superior spatial ability. The educational implications of the results are considered.