Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2021 Jul;207:105124. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105124. Epub 2021 Mar 14.
Previous research has demonstrated the contribution of parents' number language to children's own engagement with numbers and later mathematical achievement. Although there is evidence that both the quantity and complexity of parent number talk contribute to children's math learning, it is unclear whether different forms of parents' number talk-statements versus prompts-offer unique contributions to how children engage in math. We examined parent number talk among 50 dyads of parents and 2- to 4-year-olds during pretend play, coding parents' provisions of informative number statements and prompts inviting children to engage in number talk. The total amount (tokens) and diversity (types) of children's number words were analyzed separately. Parents' number utterances, particularly prompts about number, were infrequent. Both parents' number statements and their prompts were uniquely related to children's number word tokens. Only prompts were associated with children's number word types. Follow-up analyses indicated that prompts were associated with lengthier parent-child conversations about number than parent statements and that children used larger number words when responding to parent prompts than when they themselves initiated number talk. These findings highlight the importance of parents' prompts for enhancing the quality of parent-child math exchanges by providing opportunities for children to advance their current use of numerical language. Consequently, parents' use of number-related prompts may play an important role in children's early math engagement.
先前的研究已经证明了父母的数字语言数量和复杂程度对孩子接触数字和以后的数学成就的贡献。尽管有证据表明，父母的数字语言无论是陈述形式还是提示形式，都能为孩子参与数学活动提供独特的贡献，但目前尚不清楚它们是否提供了独特的贡献。我们在假装游戏中观察了 50 对父母和 2 至 4 岁的孩子之间的父母数字对话，对父母提供的信息丰富的数字陈述和邀请孩子参与数字对话的提示进行了编码。分别分析了儿童数字单词的总量（标记）和多样性（类型）。父母的数字话语，尤其是关于数字的提示，很少。父母的数字陈述和提示都与孩子的数字单词标记有独特的关系。只有提示与儿童的数字单词类型相关。后续分析表明，提示与父母与孩子之间关于数字的更长时间的对话有关，而不是与父母的陈述有关，并且孩子在回应父母的提示时使用的数字单词比他们自己发起数字对话时更长。这些发现强调了父母提示的重要性，通过为孩子提供机会来提高亲子数学交流的质量，从而促进他们当前对数字语言的使用。因此，父母使用与数字相关的提示可能在孩子的早期数学参与中发挥重要作用。
