Tailor math-talk interventions to children's inhibitory control levels rather than uniformly encouraging all parents to talk more about math¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 5 claims (2 for, 3 mixed) · 2 studies (1 review, 1 associational), q2 · 1 of 2 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Based on the finding that only children with higher inhibitory control benefited from parental number talk, the authors recommend that interventions "should be tailored particularly to children's propensity levels". Rather than uniformly encouraging all parents to talk more about math, interventions should consider children's inhibitory control. For children with low inhibitory control, the authors suggest either designing math discussion "that does not excessively taxing children's executive functioning resources" or training children's inhibitory control skills alongside encouraging more parent math talk.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Assessment of children's inhibitory control before assigning intervention components, since the benefit of math input differs by propensity level.

Constraints¶

• The article states these are future directions for intervention work; the supporting interaction was concurrent and non-causal, and experimental work testing whether children with differing inhibition benefit differently from math talk manipulations is still needed.

Target Learners¶

• Preschool-aged children (3–4 years) with varying inhibitory control

Target Learning Goals¶

• Early math achievement from parental math input

Affordances¶

• Opportunity Propensity Interaction Early Math

Claims¶

• Children's inhibitory control moderates the association between parental number talk and children's math achievement, with a positive association only at higher inhibitory control [+W]
• At high (but not low) levels of children's inhibitory control, parental number talk was associated with children's math performance [+W]
• The number talk × inhibitory control interaction is domain-specific: it did not hold for parents' overall talk or for children's vocabulary as the outcome [~W]
• Children's inhibitory control is positively related to math achievement as a main effect, independent of parental input [~W]
• Student characteristics beyond prior knowledge bear on inquiry learning: inhibitory control predicts inquiry outcomes, and in one study a direct-instruction advantage over inquiry held only for students with low domain self-concept [~W]

Related Strategies¶

• Non-intensive Home Numeracy Environment (HNE) Intervention Program

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Silver, A. M., Elliott, L., & Libertus, M. E. (2022). Parental math input is not uniformly beneficial for young children: The moderating role of inhibitory control. Journal of Educational Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000679