A Study On The Relationship Between Spontaneous Quantity And Number Focus And Early Mathematical Ability Of Older Childre

In recent years,researchers have begun to pay attention to children’s spontaneous focusing on numerosity(SFON)and spontaneous focusing on Arabic number symbols(SFONS)in daily life.Previous cross-sectional and longitudinal studies revealed that young children largely differ in their SFON and SFONS tendency before formal school education and showed that these individual differences are predictive of numerical abilities.Therefore,it is very important to discuss the influence of SFON and SFONS on the development of early numeracy skills and clarify the relationship between them.The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between SFON,SFONS and early numeracy skills of children aged 5-6 and whether SFON or SFONS plays a mediating role between children’s math interest and early numeracy skills.In this study,a total of 111 children aged 5-6 and their parents from two private kindergartens in Dongtai City,Jiangsu Province were invited to participate in.The test method was used to measure the level of children’s SFON,SFONS and early numeracy skills.In addition,their parents were asked to answer the children’s math interest through questionnaire survey.SPSS 26.0 was used to analyze the data,and the results are as follows:(1)The tendency of SFON and SFONS are above the average level on the whole,with large differences among individuals,but there is no significant difference in gender.More precisely,the performance of children aged 5-6 in the task of picture task is better than imitation task,and the performance of SFON is better than SFONS.(2)There are individual differences in the early numeracy skills ability of children aged 5-6,which are generally above the average level.There is no significant gender difference in counting,rapid digit naming,rapid dice naming,number recognition,symbolic comparison and arithmetic,while girls perform better in the nonsymbolic comparison.(3)There are individual differences in math interest of children aged 5-6,which are above the average level and do not have significant gender differences.(4)There is a significant positive correlation between SFON and early numeracy skills including counting,rapid digit naming,rapid dice naming,symbolic comparison,nonsymbolic comparison and arithmetic.And SFON can also significantly positively predict counting,rapid digit naming,rapid dice naming,symbolic comparison,nonsymbolic comparison,and arithmetic.(5)There is a significant positive correlation between SFON and math interest,and children’s math interest can significantly predict SFON.(6)SFONS is neither correlated with nor predict early numeracy skills and math interest.(7)SFON plays a complete mediating role between math interest and rapid digit naming.