Background: Growing attention has been paid to the possibility of supporting early numeracy in at-risk kindergartners. Furthermore, it is assumed that language proficiency is an important prerequisite in early maths skills.
Aims: To examine whether remedial early numeracy education in kindergarten, which has been proven to be effective in general, is also beneficial for children with a language deficiency.
Methods & Procedures: Based on intensive selection, four different conditions were included: two groups received remedial education, one consisting of children being language proficient (N = 86) and one of children with a language deficiency (N = 26), and two groups followed the regular curriculum, one consisting of children being language proficient (N = 51) and one of children with a language deficiency (N = 24). Remedial education was for 1.5 school years (90 sessions, 30 min per session, twice per week), following the programme 'The Road to Mathematics'. During this period, the children receiving remedial education did not attend the regular maths lessons in the classroom, which were offered for at least 1 h per week. Effects were assessed for early numeracy and mathematical skills (operationalized as basic calculation fluency) in kindergarten and first grade.
Outcomes & Results: Three analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) revealed that, when accounting for achievement at pre-test, children with a language deficiency who received remedial numeracy education performed better on early numeracy skills in kindergarten and first grade than kindergartners with a language deficiency that followed the regular curriculum. Furthermore, they were able to catch up with their language proficient peers in early numeracy. However, children with a language deficiency who received remedial numeracy education did not differ from children who followed the regular curriculum on mathematical skills, suggesting that benefits for numeracy did not generalize to more advanced skills of addition and subtraction.
Conclusions & Implications: Since, in general, it can be concluded that early numeracy education is indeed effective for kindergartners with a language deficiency, this study finds evidence that intensive support is desirable for children with delayed or impaired language development.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12159 | DOI Listing |
J Exp Child Psychol
December 2024
Department of Early Childhood Education, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Early language skills are considered important precursors of early mathematical development. Prior research extensively explored the association between vocabulary and early numeracy. However, few studies have delved into the specific impact of mathematical language on this association.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Few trials have explored long-term effects of interventions designed to reduce child stunting. We evaluated school-age outcomes in rural Zimbabwean children who received cluster-randomised water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and/or infant and young child feeding (IYCF) interventions from pregnancy up to 18 months of age.
Methods: The Sanitation Hygiene Infant Nutrition Efficacy (SHINE) trial enrolled pregnant women from two rural Zimbabwean districts (Chirumanzu and Shurugwi) between 2012 and 2015, and cluster-randomised them using a 2 × 2 factorial design to standard-of-care, WASH, IYCF, or combined WASH & IYCF, with a co-primary outcome of height-for-age Z-score and haemoglobin at 18 months (clinicaltrials.
Lancet Child Adolesc Health
January 2025
Yale Child Study Center, New Haven, CT, USA.
Background: In low-income and middle-income countries, an estimated 181·9 million (74·6%) preschool-aged children do not receive adequate nurturing care in health, nutrition, protection, learning, and responsive care, thus jeopardising their healthy development across the life course. Working alongside the health sector, multisectoral actions including social protection and education are necessary to achieve child health and development outcomes. Innovations are needed to expand access to high-quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) for young children and opportunities for youth development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWest Afr J Med
November 2024
Department of Community Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.
Background: Developmental delay, characterized by a child's failure to achieve expected milestones in one or more developmental domains, is prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, where two-thirds of children under five are at risk, exacerbated by limited early screening.
Objectives: This study assessed the prevalence and factors associated with developmental delay among under-five children in rural and urban areas of Oyo State, Nigeria.
Methods: This comparative cross-sectional study utilizing cluster sampling was used to select 1,839 children aged 3 to 4 years.
The current article describes the Remote Infant Studies of Early Learning, a battery intended to provide robust looking time measures of cognitive development that can be administered remotely to inform our understanding of individual developmental trajectories in typical and atypical populations, particularly infant siblings of autistic children. This battery was developed to inform our understanding of early cognitive and language development in infants who will later receive a diagnosis of autism. Using tasks that have been successfully implemented in lab-based paradigms, we included assessments of attention, memory, prediction, word recognition, numeracy, multimodal processing, and social evaluation.
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