Early literacy and early numeracy: The value of including early literacy skills in the prediction of numeracy development

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine whether early literacy skills uniquely predict early numeracy skills development. During the first year of the study, 69 3- to 5-year-old preschoolers were assessed on the Preschool Early Numeracy Skills (PENS) test and the Test of Preschool Early Literacy Skills (TOPEL). Participants were assessed again a year later on the PENS test and on the Applied Problems and Calculation subtests of the Woodcock–Johnson III Tests of Achievement. Three mixed effect regressions were conducted using Time 2 PENS, Applied Problems, and Calculation as the dependent variables. Print Knowledge and Vocabulary accounted for unique variance in the prediction of Time 2 numeracy scores. Phonological Awareness did not uniquely predict any of the mathematics domains. The findings of this study identify an important link between early literacy and early numeracy development.

Highlights

► We examined the unique relations of early literacy to numeracy development. ► Children were assessed in PK on early literacy and math and a year later on math. ► Vocabulary and print knowledge account for unique variance in numeracy development. ► Phonological awareness does not account for unique variance in numeracy development. ► We conclude that specific early literacy skills are important in math development.

Introduction

The preschool and kindergarten years represent a critical juncture in children’s academic development. Research has shown that academic achievement at early ages is highly related to later academic achievement (Butler et al., 1985, Krajewski and Schneider, 2009, Stevenson and Newman, 1986). The two central domains of children’s early academic achievement are reading and mathematics. These two domains not only are important individually but also are necessary for the acquisition of knowledge in other domains (Anders, 1986, Brown and Murray, 2005, Snow et al., 1998). Furthermore, mathematics and reading may be important in the development of each other. From very early ages, these two domains are related (McClelland et al., 2007, Welsh et al., 2010) and are predictive of each other over the long term (Duncan et al., 2007, Juel, 1988). However, the specific nature of this relation, particularly at school entry, is unclear. In this study, we examined how specific early literacy skills predict later numeracy skills beyond initial numeracy skills.

Although most children do not often receive formal instruction in reading until they enter kindergarten or first grade, skills that are developed prior to formal instruction have been shown to be important to the development of reading proficiency. The skills, knowledge, and attitudes toward reading and writing that develop before formal instruction are called early literacy skills (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). The three primary early literacy skills are oral language, phonological processing abilities, and print knowledge. Oral language skills include word knowledge, vocabulary, understanding grammatical rules (Storch & Whitehurst, 2002). The aspect of phonological processing abilities most often linked to reading development is phonological awareness (Adams, 1990, Cunningham and Stanovich, 1997, Wagner and Torgesen, 1987). Phonological awareness refers to a child’s ability to detect and manipulate language through tasks such as matching, blending, and deleting parts of words (Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). The third early literacy skill, print knowledge, is a child’s knowledge of letter names and sounds, words, and basic conventions about books and print such as how to hold and use books and the directionality of print (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998).

Similar to reading, children begin to develop their mathematics skills at an early age. Some evidence suggests that children are born with a degree of informal mathematical competence such as the ability to recognize changes in magnitude (Starkey and Cooper, 1980, Wood and Spelke, 2005). This informal knowledge develops as children explore their natural environment (Ginsburg, 1975), but can also be improved through instruction (Baroody et al., 2009, Clements and Sarama, 2008, Lai et al., 2008, Ramani and Siegler, 2008, Starkey et al., 2004). The evaluation of the early numeracy skills of preschoolers centers around three highly related, but distinct, domains: numbering, numerical relations, and arithmetic operations (Jordan et al., 2007, Purpura, 2009). Numbering entails knowledge of the standard verbal counting sequence, knowledge of counting principles, and the ability to determine the total number of items in a set (cardinality) by immediately recognizing it (subitizing) or by counting the set. Numerical relations involves knowledge of how two or more items (collections or numbers) are connected or relevant to each other and the association between the numbers on the mental number line. Arithmetic operations is a child’s ability to understand changes in quantity and obtain new quantities from the change in the size of sets. These domains, or aspects of these domains, are the most studied aspects of early mathematics (Baroody et al., 1984, Ginsburg et al., 1998, Jordan et al., 2006) and the concepts and skills most necessary for the development of basic formal mathematics skills such as addition and subtraction (Jordan, Kaplan, Ramineni, & Locuniak, 2009).

Reading and mathematics skills are related over time (Duncan et al., 2007, Hecht et al., 2001, Juel, 1988), and children who have difficulties in one area have a high likelihood of having difficulties in the other area (Barberisi, Katusic, Colligan, Weaver, & Jacobsen, 2005). Correlations between mathematics and reading scores generally average approximately .60 in elementary school and adolescence (Fuchs et al., 2006, Hecht et al., 2001, Lee et al., 2009) and can be even higher in preschool (McClelland et al., 2007, Welsh et al., 2010). In addition, early mathematics and reading skills are predictive of each other over time, even as late as middle school and high school (Hooper, Roberts, Sideris, Burchinal, & Zeisel, 2010). Potential explanations for the significant relations between these domains include genetic, cognitive, and environmental links (Farrington-Flint et al., 2009, Gathercole et al., 2004, Hart et al., 2009, Rohde and Thompson, 2007, Spinath et al., 2006, Swanson and Beebe-Frankenberger, 2004). However, one understudied reason for this connection is that skills in each domain reciprocally influence the development of skills in the other domain.

There is evidence for a unique role that specific early literacy skills play in the development of later mathematics abilities. Notably, children with both reading and mathematics difficulties appear to develop specific mathematics skills at a slower rate than children with only mathematics difficulties (Jordan, Hanich, & Kaplan, 2003). Of the three early literacy skills, the one most often connected to mathematics skills is phonological awareness (Fuchs et al., 2006, Fuchs et al., 2010, Hecht et al., 2001, Krajewski et al., 2008, Krajewski and Schneider, 2009, Krajewski et al., 2008). Several theories propose a direct or indirect relation between phonological awareness and mathematics skills (Krajewski et al., 2008, Simmons and Singleton, 2008). Notably, the isolated number words hypothesis (Krajewski et al., 2008) indicates that the relation between reading and mathematics is focused on the application of phonological awareness principles to the learning of number words. Krajewski et al., 2008, Krajewski and Schneider, 2009 noted that phonological awareness skills enable children to differentiate and manipulate individual words in the number sequence. However, their research also indicates that this relation is primarily found at the base level of mathematics skills (i.e., number word learning) and that phonological awareness is related to later mathematics skills only indirectly through its relation to early mathematics skills.

Although less studied than phonological awareness, language skills have also been found to be related to concurrent mathematics performance and predictive of later mathematics performance (Hooper et al., 2010, Romano et al., 2010). Much of the application of mathematical knowledge to basic computational and comparative skills is inherently dependent on children’s understanding of language. For example, language skills may be important for understanding the concepts of “more” and “less” as well as understanding that a range of mathematical words can mean the same thing and can often be used interchangeably (e.g., plus, and, add, together). These language-related mathematics terms are often found in mathematics assessments, interventions, and curricula.

Most research regarding the relation between language skills and mathematics skills has focused on two areas: children’s language skills in relation to word problem performance in elementary school (Fuchs et al., 2005, Fuchs et al., 2008, Fuchs et al., 2010) and mathematics performance differences between native English speakers and English language learners (Chang et al., 2009, Bautista et al., 2009, Johnson and Monroe, 2009, Martiniello, 2009). These studies generally indicate that children with low language skills—as a function of either ability or English language learner status—perform more poorly than higher ability peers on mathematics word problems, but these differences do not extend to general nonverbal calculation skills. Little research has been conducted to examine the relation between language and mathematics at school entry.

Even though print knowledge is often a strong predictor of children’s later reading skills (Compton, 2000, Furnes and Samuelsson, 2009, Lonigan et al., 2000, Stevenson and Newman, 1986, Tunmer et al., 1988), the relation between children’s print knowledge and mathematics skills is not well studied. Knowledge of the base concepts of print knowledge and mathematics (number identification and letter identification) are highly related in preschool (Piasta, Purpura, & Wagner, 2010) and kindergarten (Matthews, Ponitz, & Morrison, 2009). Understanding the functions and nature of print can logically be connected to early mathematics skills because many aspects of informal and formal mathematics rely on printed numbers or symbols. For example, both letters and numbers serve similar functions as labels applied to base structures of their respective domains. When combined with other letters or numbers, they result in a new symbol with a different meaning.

Although each early literacy domain is correlated to and predictive of numeracy skills, it is unclear whether each early literacy skill is uniquely related to numeracy skills development. As of yet, no study has evaluated the relation between these domains at the same time. Understanding the concurrent and predictive relations each early literacy skill has with numeracy development can provide information for the enhancement of preschool curriculum and intervention development. The purpose of the current study was to examine how and which early literacy skills in preschool uniquely predict later numeracy skills. Based on prior research, it was hypothesized that all three early literacy skills would uniquely predict later numeracy performance even after initial mathematics skills were controlled.

Section snippets

Participants

As part of a larger study on children’s mathematics development involving 393 preschoolers, 91 children were also assessed on their early literacy skills during the first year of this study. Of these children, a total of 69 were assessed on their mathematics abilities a year later. Those children who did not complete the second assessment had either moved out of district during the course of the year or changed schools and could not be located. At the start of the study, 40 of the children who

Preliminary analyses

Children who completed both assessments were not significantly different from those who did not complete the posttest on their Time 1 mathematics, F(1, 90) = 0.28, p = .596, Print Knowledge, F(1, 90) = 0.14, p = .706, Vocabulary, F(1, 90) = 1.00, p = .320, Phonological Awareness, F(1, 90) = 0.74, p = .393, or nonverbal cognitive ability, F(1, 86) = 1.51, p = .222. Means, standard deviations, and correlations between tasks are presented in Table 1.

Discussion

The results of this study indicate that all three early literacy skill domains were individually related to, and predictive of, young children’s general numeracy knowledge. However, only two of these three skills—vocabulary and print knowledge—were uniquely predictive of later numeracy performance when accounting for initial numeracy performance and nonverbal cognitive ability. Although initial phonological awareness was correlated with later numeracy development, the predictive relation

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the Institute of Education Science, US Department of Education (R305B04074 and R305B100017). Views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and were not reviewed or cleared by the grantors.

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