When days are numbered: calendar structure and the development of calendar processing in English and Chinese

Chinese parents' support of preschoolers' mathematical development

Research has documented the critical role played by the early home environment in children's mathematical development in Western contexts. Yet little is known about how Chinese parents support their preschoolers' development of math skills. The Chinese context is of particular interest because Chinese children outperform their Western counterparts in math, even early in development. The current study sought to fill this gap by examining a sample of 90 families of 4- and 5-year-olds from mainland China. Parental support-as measured by the frequency of parent-child engagement in home activities as well as parent number talk-and parents' role in children's numeracy skills were investigated. Results indicate wide variation among parents in both types of support. Frequency of engagement in formal numeracy activities, including counting objects and reading number story books, was related to children's knowledge of cardinality. A principal components analysis did not identify informal numeracy activities as a distinct home activity component, likely due to the infrequent occurrences of game-like numeracy activities among the Chinese families. Instead, a structured activity component emerged (e.g., playing musical instruments) and was positively related to children's arithmetic skills. Diversity, but not quantity, of parent number talk was related to children's symbolic magnitude understanding. The distinctive relationships between specific parental measures and child outcomes speak to the need for nuanced identification of home environment factors that are beneficial to particular math competencies. The findings also suggest cultural variations in the mechanisms that support children's mathematical development, highlighting the merits of investigating this topic in non-Western contexts.

The Use of a Novel Term Helps Preschoolers Learn the Concept of Angle: An Intervention Study With Chinese Preschool Children

Angle is an important concept in geometry. Young children have difficulty separating angle size from other dimensions such as the length of angle sides, perhaps due to whole-object bias in word learning. The present study used the pre-test-training-post-test design to investigate the effectiveness of two ways of separating angle from angle size in 3-6-year-old Chinese preschoolers. A total of 228 children were given a pre-test and 219 of them failed the crucial test. 168 of the 219 children were present at school during the training phase and were randomly assigned to three groups: the "toma" group (n = 57), which received training to call the whole angle figure as "toma" and angle size as angle size; the "angle/angle size" group (n = 56), which received the training of separating "angle" from "angle size"; and the control group (n = 55), which used "angle size" alone to represent both the overall angle figure and angle size. Results showed that the "toma" group improved significantly more than the other two groups, the latter of which did not differ from each other. These results suggest that it is insufficient to have two separate words/phrases (angle and angle size) for children to learn to differentiate angle from angle size, perhaps due to their shared usage of the word angle. Instead, the use of a novel term is necessary and sufficient to improve learning. Implications for preschool education are discussed.

A Mechanistic Study of the Association Between Symbolic Approximate Arithmetic Performance and Basic Number Magnitude Processing Based on Task Difficulty

Two types of number magnitude processing – semantic and spatial – are significantly correlated with children’s arithmetic performance. However, it remains unclear whether these abilities are independent predictors of symbolic approximate arithmetic performance. The current study addressed this question by assessing 86 kindergartners (mean age of 5 years and 7 months) on semantic number processing (number comparison task), spatial number processing (number line estimation task), and symbolic approximate arithmetic performance with different levels of difficulty. The results showed that performance on both tasks of number magnitude processing was significantly correlated with symbolic approximate arithmetic performance, but the strength of these correlations was moderated by the difficulty level of the arithmetic task. The simple symbolic approximate arithmetic task was equally related to both tasks. In contrast, for more difficult symbolic approximate arithmetic tasks, the contribution of number comparison ability was smaller than that of the number line estimation ability. These results indicate that the strength of contribution of the different types of numerical processing depends on the difficulty of the symbolic approximate arithmetic task.

The linguistic transparency of first language calendar terms affects calendar calculations in a second language

Calendar calculations - e.g., calculating the nth month after a certain month - are an important component of temporal cognition, and can vary cross-linguistically. English speakers rely on a verbal list representation-processing system. Chinese speakers - whose calendar terms are numerically transparent - rely on a more efficient numerical system. Does knowing a numerically transparent calendar lexicon facilitate calendar calculations in an opaque second language? Late Chinese-English bilinguals and English native speakers performed a Month and a Weekday Calculation Task in English. Directionality (forward/backward) and boundary-crossing (within/across the year/week boundary) were manipulated. English speakers relied on verbal list processing, and were slower in backward than forward calculations. In spite of the English calendar system's opaqueness, bilinguals relied on numerical processing, were slower in across- than within-boundary trials, and under some conditions had faster RTs than the native speakers. Results have implications for research on temporal cognition, linguistic relativity and bilingual cognition.

Development of numerical estimation in Chinese preschool children

Although much is known about the development of mental representations of numbers, it is not clear how early children begin to represent numbers on a linear scale. The current study aimed to examine the development of numerical estimation of Chinese preschoolers. In total, 160 children of three age groups (51 3- and 4-year-olds, 50 5-year-olds, and 59 6-year-olds) were administered the numerical estimation task on three types of number lines (Arabic numbers, dots, and objects). All three age groups took the test on the 0-10 number lines, and the oldest group also took it on the 0-100 and 0-1000 Arabic number lines. Results showed that (a) linear representation of numbers increased with age, (b) representation of numbers was consistent across the three types of tasks, (c) Chinese participants generally showed earlier onset of various landmarks of attaining linear representations (e.g., linearity of various number ranges, accuracy, intercepts) than did their Western counterparts, as reported in previous studies, and (d) the estimates of older Chinese preschoolers on the 0-100 and 0-1000 symbolic number lines fitted the two-linear and linear models better than alternative models such as the one-cycle, two-cycle, and logarithmic models. These results extend the small but accumulating literature on the earlier development of number cognition among Chinese preschoolers compared with their Western counterparts, suggesting the importance of cultural factors in the development of early number cognition.

Chinese kindergartners’ automatic processing of numerical magnitude in Stroop-like tasks

Using Stroop-like tasks, this study examined whether Chinese kindergartners showed automatic processing of numerical magnitude. A total of 36 children (mean age = 5 years 10 months) were asked to perform physical size comparison (i.e., "Which of two numbers is bigger in physical size?") and numerical magnitude tasks (i.e., "Which of two numbers is bigger in numerical magnitude?") on 216 number pairs. These number pairs varied in levels of congruence between numerical magnitude and physical size (for Stroop effect) and numerical distance (for distance effect). On the basis of analyses of response time and error rates, we found that Chinese kindergartners showed automatic processing of numerical magnitude. These results are significantly different from previous studies' findings about the onset age (ranging from around the end of first grade to third grade) for automatic processing of numerical magnitude.

Reasoning about conventional time as a function of conventional time systems

This study investigated how reasoning about conventional time information varied as a function of conventional time systems by using the Chinese month and Jieqi systems. Twenty Chinese students were asked to answer month-related questions and another 20 were asked to answer Jieqi-related questions. Reaction time and accuracy were the dependent measures. A cross-boundary effect was observed in processing months, and distance and direction effects were obtained when participants judged the interval of Jieqi. These results suggested that arithmetic operations were used in Chinese reasoning about months and verbal-articulatory processes were used for the Jieqi. The effects of mode of language representation on cognition and the strategies for cross-linguistic study are discussed.