Mounting evidence suggests that home engagement in mathematics is related to variability in early math skill. Although prior work has investigated parental predictors of home math engagement more broadly, it remains understudied whether the same factors relate to toddlers’ home math environment, and if home math experiences are associated with toddlers’ math skills. Here we asked whether parents’ beliefs, attitudes, and experiences with math relate to their engagement in home numeracy and spatial activities with toddlers and are associated with toddlers’ developing number and spatial skills (N = 189). We find that a broad range of parent factors, including parents’ beliefs about the importance of math, math growth mindset beliefs, math anxiety, and math coursework, predicts parents’ frequency of engaging in numeracy activities with toddlers. Furthermore, home number activities predicted toddlers’ number skills. Parents’ math beliefs, attitudes, and experiences all had positive indirect effects on toddlers’ number skills through associations with number activities. However, none of these parent factors predicted home spatial activities, and we saw no association between home spatial activities and toddlers’ spatial skills. Altogether, these results suggest that even at very young ages, parent factors shape the home environment and toddlers’ early numeracy learning, but we did not detect associations for spatial skills.

中文翻译：

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家长对家庭数学环境的预测以及与幼儿数学技能的关联


越来越多的证据表明，家庭数学参与与早期数学技能的可变性有关。尽管之前的工作更广泛地调查了父母对家庭数学参与度的预测因素，但仍然没有充分研究相同的因素是否与幼儿的家庭数学环境有关，以及家庭数学经验是否与幼儿的数学技能有关。在这里，我们询问父母对数学的信念、态度和经验是否与他们与幼儿一起参与家庭计算和空间活动有关，以及是否与幼儿发展数字和空间技能有关（N = 189）。我们发现，一系列广泛的家长因素，包括家长对数学重要性的信念、数学成长心态信念、数学焦虑和数学课程作业，可以预测家长与幼儿一起参与算术活动的频率。此外，家庭数字活动可以预测幼儿的数字技能。父母的数学信仰、态度和经验都通过与数字活动的联系对幼儿的数字技能产生积极的间接影响。然而，这些父母因素都不能预测家庭空间活动，而且我们发现家庭空间活动与幼儿的空间技能之间没有关联。总而言之，这些结果表明，即使在很小的时候，父母因素也会影响家庭环境和幼儿的早期算术学习，但我们没有发现与空间技能的关联。