Preschoolers’ Awareness of Their Mathematical Abilities
Date
2011-05-25
Authors
Ferhat, Caroline E. Boyer
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Abstract
During the first several years of life, preschool children develop an awareness of self, as well as basic mathematical abilities. It has been shown that children who are more aware of their own abilities are also those who are more successful on measures of cognition. It is easy to see that the same would be true of the relation between self-awareness and mathematical abilities. The present study is aimed at discovering how these two constructs are related. Ninety-nine preschool children were administered tests of perceived cognitive competence and mathematical abilities (WJIII-Applied Problems, seriation, oddity). The following research questions are asked: Do children who score higher on measures of mathematics also give high ratings of their own general cognitive competence? Second, do children who score higher on measures of mathematics also give higher ratings of their performance on those measures? The analyses indicated that, the children’s perceived general cognitive competence ratings were significantly related to their performance on the WJIII-Applied Problems test. No significant relations were found between the children’s oddity and seriation scores and their perceived general cognitive competence ratings. The children’s oddity test scores were significantly related to their ratings of their performance on the oddity measure. No significant relations were found between the children’s performance on the WJIII-Applied Problems and seriation tests and their ratings of their abilities on these measures. These findings suggest preschool children have begun to develop an awareness of their cognitive abilities, but that this development is not complete even by four years of age.
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Self-awareness, Cognition, Preschoolers, Mathematics