Are preschoolers who spontaneously create patterns better in mathematics?

Abstract

Background: Early patterning competence has recently been identified as an important precursor of mathematical development. Whereas the focus of this research has been on children's ability regarding repeating patterns, children might also differ in their spontaneous attention to patterns. Aims:The present study aimed to explore four-to five-year olds' Spontaneous Focusing On Patterns (SFOP) and its association with their patterning and mathematical ability. Sample: Participants were 378 children (Mage = 4y10m; 191 boys) from 17 preschools.Methods: SFOP was measured with a construction task in which children had to build a tower with 15 blocks of three different colours. The constructions of the children were grouped into three categories (i.e., pattern, random, and sorting). We additionally SPONTANEOUS CREATION OF PATTERNS 2 administered tasks assessing their patterning ability, mathematical ability, spatial ability, and visuospatial working memory.Results: When building a tower, 37% of the preschoolers spontaneously created a pattern, 49% made a random construction, and 14% sorted the blocks per colour. Preschoolers who spontaneously created a pattern had better patterning and mathematical ability than children in the random group. Group differences in patterning ability and spatial skills accounted for the difference in mathematical ability. Conclusions:The current data suggest that children's spontaneous attention to patterns is an important component of their mathematical ability. Children's spontaneous pattern constructions may provide opportunities to discuss and practice patterns in preschool settings or at home, but more research is required to further analyse the role of SFOP in early mathematical development.

Spontaneous mathematical focusing tendencies in mathematical development

“…SFONS has been found to predict numerical ability after controlling for spatial ability and language ability (Rathé et al, 2019). Finally, SFOP tendency and mathematical ability remained related after taking into account visio-spatial working memory and spatial skills (Wijns et al, 2019).…”

“…However, no existing study on SFOR has examined measures that use both behavioral imitation and description or pictorial tasks. As well, other potential focusing tendencies either have relied on a single measure or have not explicitly reported consistency across task (Perez & McCrink, 2019;Rathé et al, 2019;Wijns et al, 2019). Future studies of these potential tendencies will hopefully examine this crucial issue.…”

“…SFONS studies have found that symbolic number knowledge was only partially related to SFONS responses (Rathé et al, 2019). Not all children with high patterning ability (based on their performance on a test measuring their ability to extend, generalize and memorize given patterns on demand) were also found to spontaneously create a pattern in an unguided tower construction situation), showing also that differences in SFOP cannot be fully explained by differences in patterning ability (Wijns et al, 2019).…”

Longitudinal associations between spontaneous number focusing tendencies, numerical abilities, and mathematics achievement in 4- to 7-year-olds.

“…This suggests that the SFON Picture task continues to appeal to a different spontaneous number focusing tendency than the SFONS Picture task, once children receive explicit formal instruction in mathematics and numbers. Extending these findings, future studies need to investigate how SFON and SFONS are related to other spontaneous mathematical focusing tendencies that go beyond the domain of number, such as spontaneous focusing on mathematical relations (SFOR, McMullen et al, 2013), spontaneous focusing on patterns (SFOP, Wijns et al, 2020), and spontaneous focusing on spatial locations (SFOL, Hannula et al, 2010) (Inglis, 2020;Verschaffel et al, 2020).…”

“…Since the early 2000s, researchers have started to investigate children's spontaneous number focusing tendencies and their unique contribution to early mathematical development (for overviews, see Hannula-Sormunen, 2015;McMullen et al, 2018;Rathé et al, 2016;Verschaffel et al, 2020). While mathematical, and specifically numerical, abilities, refer to the numerical knowledge and skills children use in explicit numerical tasks (e.g., being able to count and determine the number of cookies on a plate when explicitly prompted to do so), spontaneous number focusing tendencies refer to children's tendencies to attend to the aspect of number in their everyday surroundings in a self-initiated way (e.g., spontaneously starting to count the number of cookies on a plate when not explicitly guided or prompted to do so) (McMullen et al, 2018;Verschaffel et al, 2020).…”