Are children’s spontaneous number focusing tendencies related to their home numeracy environment?

Young children show large individual differences in their tendency to focus spontaneously on numerical aspects (e.g., numerosities or Arabic number symbols) of their everyday environment. The origins of these individual differences are unclear. Given the role of the home numeracy environment (HNE) in children’s early mathematical development and the assumed link between children’s spontaneous number focusing tendencies and their numerical behavior in everyday life, it is plausible that children’s spontaneous focusing tendencies are related to their HNE. The present study aimed to test this hypothesis by longitudinally investigating children’s spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) and spontaneous focusing on Arabic number symbols (SFONS) in relation to their HNE. Participants were 128 children (4- to 5-year-olds), who were followed from the second until the third year of Flemish kindergarten. In both kindergarten years, children completed a SFON and SFONS Picture task while their parents completed a home numeracy questionnaire. Correlation analyses and structural equation modeling revealed no significant associations between children’s spontaneous number focusing tendencies and their HNE, neither in second nor in third year of kindergarten. This finding suggests that children’s spontaneous number focusing tendencies are not per se related to their HNE. Various possible explanations for this unexpected finding are discussed and directions for further research on this relationship are suggested.

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