Background

Young children’s spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) as measured by experimental tasks is related to their mathematics achievement. This association is hypothetically explained by children’s self-initiated practice in number recognition during everyday activities. As such, experimentally measured SFON should be associated with SFON exhibited during everyday activities and play. However, prior studies investigating this assumed association provided inconsistent findings.

Aims

We aimed to address this issue by investigating the association between kindergartners’ SFON as measured by two different experimental tasks and the frequency of their number-related utterances during a typical picture book reading activity.

Sample

Participants were 65 4- to 6-year-olds in kindergarten (before the start of formal education).

Methods

Kindergartners individually participated in two sessions. First, they completed an action-based SFON Imitation task and a verbal SFON Picture task, with a short visuo-motor task in between. Next, children were invited to spontaneously comment on the pictures of a picture book during a typical picture book reading activity.

Results

Results revealed a positive association between children’s SFON as measured by the Picture task and the frequency of their number-related utterances during typical picture book reading, but no such association for the Imitation task.