Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD 20742, USA; Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92617, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2021 Aug;208:105145. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105145. Epub 2021 Apr 10.
Hand gestures can be beneficial in math contexts to reduce the user's cognitive load by supporting domain-general abilities such as working memory. Although prior work has shown a strong relation between young children's early math performance and their general cognitive abilities, it is important to consider how children's working memory ability may relate to their use of spontaneous gesture as well as their math-specific abilities. The current study examined how preschool-aged children's gesture use and working memory relate to their performance on an age-appropriate math task. Head Start preschoolers (N = 81) were videotaped while completing a modified version of the Give-N task to measure their cardinality understanding. Children also completed a forward word span task and a computerized Corsi Block task to assess their working memory. The results showed that children's spontaneous gesture use and working memory were related to their performance on the cardinality task. However, children's gestures were not significantly related to working memory after controlling for age. Findings suggest that young children from low-income backgrounds use gestures during math contexts in similar ways to preschoolers from higher-income backgrounds.
手势在数学情境中可能是有益的，可以通过支持工作记忆等一般领域的能力来减轻用户的认知负担。尽管先前的研究表明，幼儿早期的数学表现与其一般认知能力之间存在很强的关系，但重要的是要考虑儿童的工作记忆能力如何与其自发手势的使用以及他们的数学特定能力相关。本研究考察了学龄前儿童的手势使用和工作记忆如何与他们在适当年龄的数学任务上的表现相关。参加“开端计划”的学龄前儿童（N=81）在完成修改后的“Give-N”任务时被录像，以衡量他们的基数理解。儿童还完成了向前单词跨度任务和计算机化的科萨积木任务，以评估他们的工作记忆。结果表明，儿童的自发手势使用和工作记忆与他们在基数任务上的表现相关。然而，在控制年龄后，儿童的手势与工作记忆没有显著相关。研究结果表明，来自低收入背景的幼儿在数学情境中使用手势的方式与来自高收入背景的学龄前儿童相似。
Zotero 插件