Parental gestural math input and children's math skills: an intervention study

Abstract

The present intervention study examines how parents' use of gestures changes the way they provide math talk to their children, and whether increased use of parental gestures promotes children's math skills. In this parent-administered book reading intervention study, three- to four-year old Turkish-speaking children (N = 56, Mage = 49.8 months, SD = 3.6) and their parents were randomly assigned to one of the following conditions: parents asked to use gestures while reading a numerical language book (NL + G, n = 19), parents asked not to use gestures while reading a numerical language book (NL-G, n = 18), no specific instruction on gesture use to parents while reading a book without numerical language (L, n = 19). Children were assessed on four math tasks (verbal counting, cardinality, nonverbal, and verbal arithmetic) before and after the intervention phase. Parents also read their assigned book to children in both the pre- and post-intervention sessions. Results showed that parents provided more math talk when they were assigned to NL + G and NL-G compared to L in the post-intervention reading session. Moreover, parents in the NL + G group provided more math talk than those in the NL-G group. Children assigned to the NL + G group showed better improvement in their verbal arithmetic skills than those in the NL-G group. No other significant improvements in child performance were found. These results suggest that parental gesture use was associated with higher levels of math input and children's math skills exclusively in the context of the verbal arithmetic task. The possible mechanisms and contributions of providing math talk to children through different modalities are discussed.