Math Anxiety of Parent and Child
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What is the connection between parental math anxiety and children's math skills?
Exploring both interstellar and interpersonal space-time continuums. The Last Show with David Cooper. If you've ever said, I'm just not a math person when faced with numbers, this next topic for you might sting a little. There's new research that suggests the way we talk about numbers and even our own anxiety about them can shape how kids understand math before kindergarten even begins. I'm here with someone who's looked into all this. He's a psychology and neuroscience professor at the University of Missouri. His name is David Geary. Dave, welcome to the show. Thank you, David. Thanks for inviting me. There are a lot of narratives that people have about themselves and the way that they understand math.
And my worry is they kind of write off math at a young age before they ever even give it a try. Is that something that you found in your research?
Yeah, there are a lot of people who write off math. It's a very abstract field. It takes a lot of repetition, a lot of thinking, a lot of practice. A lot of that is dull. So, you know, people run into roadblocks and instead of kind of doubling down on their efforts, they kind of give up on it and write it off and try not to think too much about it. But there's long-term consequences to that if
How does early math perception affect preschoolers' learning?
There is. And I think a lot of adults normalize this I'm not good at math narrative and it can become true for kids. Let's talk about how we perceive numbers in math at a very young age, like a developmental age, even before one becomes a preschooler. What are some of the ways in which young little kids interface with math?
Yeah, yeah, great question. So in an earlier longitudinal study, we followed kids through two years of preschool, kindergarten, and through the end of first grade. And our goal was to try to identify the basic number, knowledge, and skills that predict readiness to learn math at the beginning of first grade. Because we know from other studies, and other people do as well, that if kids start behind, right at the beginning of first grade, they're likely to stay behind throughout their career. So something is going on very early on. So in this first study, we identified the core knowledge that is important for kids to know early in the preschool years. And that's a conceptual understanding of number words.
So knowing that the number word three represents three things, three events or whatever of any kind, and four represents four things and so forth, seems like a simple concept to us. And it is, but it takes kids several years to really learn the conceptual meaning of these number words and then to begin to generalize them. It's something that chimpanzees can't do at all. With thousands of trials, they just never have that conceptual insight. So it seems second nature to us, but it actually isn't. So we, in this first study, we identified that kids who had this conceptual insight earlier in the preschool years had quite a head start at the beginning of first grade. So something was going on even before the kids were entering preschool.
So there was variation in kids' knowledge even before then.
And all things equal, it would eventually even out. But I wonder if this is like a rich gets richer situation. Like the kids that are slightly better at math at a young age get more fostered. They develop their skill. The teacher pays more interest. Adults don't tell them they're not good at math. And that slight disadvantage can kind of snowball into extreme disadvantage where a slight advantage can snowball into a big advantage.
Right. Yeah, it's a rich get richer situation. And the reason is once you understand the quantities represented by number words and later numerals, then you begin to develop a network of knowledge. And it's that network of number knowledge that gets you ready for first grade. But you can't start until you have this conceptual insight. And so early insight gives you more time to build up this knowledge base before you start school.
At the risk of introducing pop psychology, it reminds me a lot of Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, where kids that are slightly better at sports get more attention.
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