The Relation between Children’s and Parent’s Attention to Number

Abstract

In the present study, we investigated the relation between children’s and parents’ attention to number. We measured children’s attention to number using a picture-matching task (Chan & Mazzocco, 2016) and recorded how frequently children’s matches were based on the number of items in a picture versus other features (e.g., the shape or color of the items). We measured parents’ attention to number during their shared reading with their child. We also evaluated the relation between children’s attention to number and their executive function (EF) skills. Thirty-seven children (4.5 to 5 years) participated with a parent. Parents completed two surveys and parent-child dyads read a storybook. The frequency of children’s number-based matches was low, but it increased when number choices were paired with choices based on other low salience features (orientation, location). Children’s EF did not account for how many features children matched on, suggesting that higher EF does not correlate with increased flexibility in matching. Overall, the frequency of parents’ attention to number during storybook reading was not correlated with the frequency of their child’s number-based choices, but parents of children who chose 4 or more number-based matches (out of 24 trials) were more likely to attend to number than were parents of children who selected fewer than 4 number-based matches. These findings suggest a subtle influence of parents’ attention to number on children’s attention to number.