Bestaan er sekseverschillen onder kleuters in de relatie tussen het werkgeheugen en rekenvaardigheid?

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate to what extent visuospatial and verbal working memory are related to numeracy of children in kindergarten and if there are gender differences in these relationships. Method: In the current study a number of 96 children aged 4-6 years from six different schools in the Netherlands participated. Visuospatial working memory was measured with the Liongame, which was adjusted for children in kindergarten. Verbal working memory was measured with a Dutch version of the Word Recall Backward task. Results on the Cito mathematic test for children in kindergarten were used to measure numeracy. Results: Two independent t-tests and a Mann-Whitney Test showed that boys perform better on visuospatial working memory tasks and there are no gender difference in verbal working memory and numeracy tasks. A hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that visuospatial working memory is a significant positive predictor of numeracy. The results showed that the relation between (visuospatial and verbal) working memory and numeracy is not moderated by gender. Discussion: Results from earlier research about numeracy are inconsistent, but overall boys tend to have higher scores. This study showed no difference in numeracy for children aged 4-6. Although this study showed boys perform better on visuospatial working memory tasks. Further research is needed in gender differences in visuospatial working memory and verbal working memory, and to find out what this means for strategies in numeracy. Furthermore it seems interesting to examine gender differences in numeracy in children aged 4-6, taking into account the strategies certain mathematic tests provoke.