Spatial and Numerical Predictors of Measurement Performance: The Moderating Effects of Community Income and Gender

Spatial reasoning and numerical predictors of measurement performance were investigated in 4th graders from low-income and affluent communities. Predictors of 2 subtypes of measurement performance (spatial--conceptual and formula based) were assessed while controlling for verbal and spatial working memory. Consistent with prior findings, students from the affluent community outperformed students from the low-income community on all measures examined. More importantly, the study revealed different patterns of relations between cognitive skills and academic performance in the 2 communities. Specifically, spatial skills were related to measurement performance in the affluent but not in the low-income community. These findings demonstrate that socioeconomic context impacts not only children's levels of performance but also their capacity to apply basic cognitive skills, like spatial reasoning, to their academic performance.

[1]  Richard Lehrer,et al.  Longitudinal Study of Children's Reasoning About Space and Geometry , 2012 .

[2]  Daniel J. Bauer,et al.  Computational Tools for Probing Interactions in Multiple Linear Regression, Multilevel Modeling, and Latent Curve Analysis , 2006 .

[3]  Edwin W. Schreiber.  The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics , 1936, The Mathematical Gazette.

[4]  Edward A. Silver,et al.  Results from the Seventh Mathematics Assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress , 2000 .

[5]  J. R. Branfield.  Journal of Structural Learning , 1971 .

[6]  S. Lubienski,et al.  A Closer Look at Black-White Mathematics Gaps: Intersections of Race and SES in NAEP Achievement and Instructional Practices Data. , 2002 .

[7]  J. Heckman.  Role of Income and Family Influence on Child Outcomes , 2008, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[8]  George W. Bright.  Estimation as Part of Learning to Measure. , 1976 .

[9]  Edwin W. Schreiber.  The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics , 1936 .

[10]  A. A. Elvin,et al.  Developing understanding of structural implications of dynamic loading in engineering students through the egg drop contest - theory and measurements : technical paper , 2006 .

[11]  E. Dearing,et al.  Home improvements: Within-family associations between income and the quality of children's home environments , 2007 .

[12]  J. Sherman.  Predicting Mathematics Performance in High School Girls and Boys , 1979 .

[13]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. , 1986, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[14]  M. Casey,et al.  The Influence of Spatial Ability on Gender Differences in Mathematics College Entrance Test Scores across Diverse Samples. , 1995 .

[15]  John W. Adams,et al.  Working Memory and Children’s Mathematical Skills: Implications for mathematical development and mathematics curricula , 2006 .

[16]  L. Hamilton.  217-249 inRegression with Graphics: A Second Course in Applied Statistics , 1991 .

[17]  Jay R. Campbell,et al.  The Nation's Report Card: Reading, 2002. , 2003 .

[18]  Jo-Anne LeFevre,et al.  The role of working memory in mental arithmetic , 2004 .

[19]  Patrick C. Kyllonen,et al.  Reasoning ability is (little more than) working-memory capacity?! , 1990 .

[20]  Clayton Goodwin,et al.  The gender gap , 2004, The Lancet.

[21]  J. Brooks-Gunn,et al.  The neighborhoods they live in: the effects of neighborhood residence on child and adolescent outcomes. , 2000, Psychological bulletin.

[22]  Jeanne Brooks-Gunn,et al.  How money matters for young children's development: parental investment and family processes. , 2002, Child development.

[23]  J. Lehto,et al.  Some factors underlying mathematical performance: The role of visuospatial working memory and non-verbal intelligence , 2008 .

[24]  Susan M. Barnett,et al.  Women's underrepresentation in science: sociocultural and biological considerations. , 2009, Psychological bulletin.

[25]  G. Evans.  The environment of childhood poverty. , 2004, The American psychologist.

[26]  Megan York,et al.  Spiral or Scaffold? An Analysis of Everyday Mathematics and Investigations in Number, Data, and Space , 2011 .

[27]  Emanuel Donchin,et al.  Working memory in the acquisition of complex cognitive skills , 1989 .

[28]  Doris R. Entwisle,et al.  The gender gap in math : its possible origins in neighborhood effects , 1994 .

[29]  Trevor Williams,et al.  Highlights from TIMSS 2007: Mathematics and Science Achievement of U.S. Fourth- and Eighth-Grade Students in an International Context. NCES 2009-001. , 2008 .

[30]  R. Bradley,et al.  The home environments of children in the United States part I: variations by age, ethnicity, and poverty status. , 2001, Child development.

[31]  Jane Watson,et al.  Volume measurement and intellectual development. , 1992 .

[32]  Lawrence C. Hamilton,et al.  V. CONTEMPORARY ADVANCES AND CLASSIC ADVICE FOR ANALYZING MEDIATING AND MODERATING VARIABLES , 2006 .

[33]  B. Rogoff.  Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive Development in Social Context , 1990 .

[34]  Stephen J Ceci,et al.  The rhetoric and reality of gap closing: when the "have-nots" gain but the "haves" gain even more . , 2005, The American psychologist.

[35]  Susan D. Voyer,et al.  Magnitude of sex differences in spatial abilities: a meta-analysis and consideration of critical variables. , 1995, Psychological bulletin.

[36]  Richard Lehrer,et al.  Designing learning environments for developing understanding of geometry and space , 1998 .

[37]  Pierre Barrouillet,et al.  Working memory and children's use of retrieval to solve addition problems. , 2005, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[38]  Robert J. Sternberg,et al.  The Nature of Mathematical Thinking , 1996 .

[39]  E. Dearing,et al.  Measurement Skills in Low-Income Elementary School Students: Exploring the Nature of Gender Differences , 2009 .

[40]  A. Su,et al.  The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics , 1932, The Mathematical Gazette.

[41]  Elana Joram,et al.  Benchmarks as Tools for Developing Measurement Sense , 2003 .

[42]  Kevin F. Miller,et al.  Measurement as a tool for thought: The role of measuring procedures in children's understanding of quantitative invariance. , 1989 .

[43]  R. Larson.  Toward a psychology of positive youth development. , 2000, The American psychologist.

[44]  D. Geary,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST The Science of Sex Differences in Science and Mathematics , 2022 .

[45]  A Framework for Teaching Early Measurement , 2000 .

[46]  Ralf Schulze,et al.  Working-memory capacity explains reasoning abilityand a little bit more , 2002 .

[47]  B. Fischhoff,et al.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory , 1980 .

[48]  J. Richardson,et al.  A jigsaw-puzzle imagery task for assessing active visuospatial processes in old and young people , 2002, Behavior research methods, instruments, & computers : a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc.

[49]  Patrick C. Kyllonen,et al.  Working memory is (almost) perfectly predicted by g , 2004 .

[50]  Morton B. Brown,et al.  Robust Tests for the Equality of Variances , 1974 .

[51]  Albert P. Shulte,et al.  New Directions for Elementary School Mathematics. 1989 Yearbook. , 1989 .

[52]  M. Linn,et al.  Emergence and characterization of sex differences in spatial ability: a meta-analysis. , 1985, Child development.

[53]  Daniel Solomon,et al.  Schools as Communities, Poverty Levels of Student Populations, and Students’ Attitudes, Motives, and Performance: A Multilevel Analysis , 1995 .

[54]  Peter Bryant,et al.  Children Doing Mathematics , 1996 .

[55]  D. Schifter,et al.  A research companion to Principles and standards for school mathematics , 2003 .

[56]  G. Evans,et al.  Childhood poverty, chronic stress, and adult working memory , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[57]  Robert C. Pianta,et al.  The Relation of Kindergarten Classroom Environment to Teacher, Family, and School Characteristics and Child Outcomes , 2002, The Elementary School Journal.

[58]  J. G. Snodgrass,et al.  A standardized set of 260 pictures: norms for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. , 1980, Journal of experimental psychology. Human learning and memory.

[59]  Steven J. Chrostowski,et al.  TIMSS 2003 International Mathematics Report: Findings from IEA's Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study at the Fourth and Eighth Grades. , 2004 .

[60]  Douglas H. Clements,et al.  Quantifying Path Length: Fourth-Grade Children's Developing Abstractions for Linear Measurement , 2003 .

[61]  Morton B. Brown,et al.  Corrigenda: Robust Tests for the Equality of Variances , 1974 .

[62]  Jan Lokan.  Maths and Science on the Line: Australian Junior Secondary Students' Performance in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. TIMSS Australia Monograph No. 1. , 1996 .

[63]  G. Hitch.  The role of short-term working memory in mental arithmetic , 1978, Cognitive Psychology.

[64]  Karen M. Kaufmann.  The Gender Gap , 2006, PS: Political Science & Politics.

[65]  Geoffrey B. Saxe,et al.  Candy Selling and Math Learning , 1988 .

[66]  K. Mccartney,et al.  Best practices in quantitative methods for developmentalists. , 2006, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development.

[67]  Douglas H. Clements.  Learning and Teaching Measurement (2003 Yearbook). , 2003 .

[68]  R. Shepard,et al.  Mental Rotation of Three-Dimensional Objects , 1971, Science.

[69]  E. Votruba-Drzal.  Income Changes and Cognitive Stimulation in Young Children's Home Learning Environments. JCPR Working Paper. , 2002 .

[70]  Douglas A. Grouws,et al.  Handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning , 1992 .

[71]  Joan Ferrini-Mundy,et al.  Principles and Standards for School Mathematics: A Guide for Mathematicians , 2000 .

[72]  Richard Fox,et al.  Teaching and learning : the essential readings , 2002 .

[73]  R. Warner.  Applied Statistics: From Bivariate through Multivariate Techniques [with CD-ROM]. , 2007 .

[74]  Marie S. Burrage,et al.  Performance on Middle School Geometry Problems With Geometry Clues Matched to Three Different Cognitive Styles , 2008 .

[75]  Stella F. Lourenco,et al.  Socioeconomic Status Modifies the Sex Difference in Spatial Skill , 2005, Psychological science.

[76]  C. Judd,et al.  Statistical difficulties of detecting interactions and moderator effects. , 1993, Psychological bulletin.

[77]  Larry H. Ludlow,et al.  Examination of the Psychometric Properties of the Measurement Skills Assessment , 2009 .

[78]  Douglas H. Clements,et al.  Geometry and spatial reasoning. , 1992 .

[79]  David A. Rettinger,et al.  How are visuospatial working memory, executive functioning, and spatial abilities related? A latent-variable analysis. , 2001, Journal of experimental psychology. General.