Investigation of linguistic and cognitive factors affecting non-routine mathematical problems in 6-7 year old children

Objective: Individuals with difficulties in mathematical skills may have problems in various language and cognitive developmental areas. The aim of this study was to examine the linguistic and cognitive factors affecting non-routine mathematical performance in 6-7 year-old children. Materials and Method: A total of 30 participants, 18 boys and 12 girls, were included in the study. Voluntary consent was obtained from the parents of the participants and Turkish Test of Early Language Development (TEDIL) and WISC-R Intelligence Test for Children were administered. The LITMUS Turkish Sentence Repetition Test (LITMUS-TR), the Turkish Nonsense Word Repetition Test (TAST) and the Non-Routine Mathematical Problems (ROM) test were administered face-to-face, in a quiet environment, in a complex order to participants who scored average or above average on the language development test and scored 90 or above on the WISC-R intelligence test. Results: Correlation analysis revealed moderate positive correlations (p<0.05) between mathematics performance and WISC-R test's overall score, verbal ability score, performance ability score; similarity, picture arrangement, and piece combination subtests and LITMUS-TR test's syntax scores. In the regression analysis conducted with these relationships, it was found that the WISC-R intelligence test had a positive and statistically significant effect on mathematics performance (β=0.46) (p<0.05). The relationship between TEDIL and Mathematics Performance was examined and it was found that mathematics performance was above average in terms of receptive language scores.