Parent Math Anxiety Predicts Early Number Talk

Abstract

ABSTRACT Differences in children’s math knowledge emerge as early as the start of kindergarten, and persist throughout schooling. Previous research implicates the importance of early parent number talk in the development of math competency. Yet we understand little about the factors that relate to variation in early parent number talk. The current study examined the relation of parent math anxiety and family socioeconomic status (SES) to parent number talk with children under the age of three (n = 36 dyads). For the first time, we show preliminary evidence that parent math anxiety (MA) predicts the amount of number talk children hear at home, beyond differences accounted for by SES. We also found a significant SES by parent MA interaction such that parent MA was predictive of higher-SES parents’ number talk but not that of lower-SES parents. Furthermore, we found that these relations were specific to parents’ cardinal number talk (but not counting), which has been shown to be particularly important in children’s math development.