Basic numerical skills, fine motor skills, and informal home numeracy predict mathematical school achievement in 2nd grade

Many adults and even more children struggle with mathematical concepts, 5-8% of school aged children show some form of learning deficit in one or more mathematical domains (Geary, 2004). For tailoring interventions or preventions, it is crucial to know which factors contribute to mathematical learning. Embodied cognition studies show that motor skills seem to be a predictor for different cognitive abilities including mathematical learning. Roebers et al. (2013) found a relation between executive functions and motor performance and their relevance for children’s transition to school. LeFevre et al. (2009) found an influence of home numeracy activities that means parent-child activities with a numerical content, on an early mathematics test. Today executive functions are a prominent and strong factor predicting early mathematical achievement. However, these studies did not combine the different predictors in their analyses, and did not test them against each other. In this study we investigated motor skills (fine and gross motor skills), executive functions (inhibition, switching and updating), basic numerical skills and home numeracy (informal as in number games and formal as in scaffolding) in a sample of 88 kindergarten children, later we also tested their mathematical school achievement in the beginning of second grade. In a linear stepwise regression we combined all of the above mentioned predictors, to see which of the predictors explain the most variance and thus are most important for interventions or preventions. The results suggest that precursors of mathematics are the strongest predictor, followed by fine motor skills and informal home numeracy. Gross motor skills, executive functions, and formal home numeracy did not significantly contribute to more explained variance