Expressive and Receptive Language Skills of Children With and Without Mathematics Difficulty

Abstract

Language skills had a great impact on children’s mathematics performance. Children with mathematics difficulties (MD) have poorer language skills than peers without MD (Chow et al., 2021). Little has been explored about the association between language skills and MD in early childhood. This study aims to examine the overall language skills of children with and without MD and explore the different patterns of variability across language domains. The sample is 140 kindergarteners from a large suburban school district in central Virginia. We administered the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA-3) for MD classification and used the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language (TACL) and the Test of Expressive Language (TEXL) to determine receptive and expressive language skills. We will use multivariate analysis of covariance to examine the overall difference in language skills of children with and without MD, controlling for cognitive skills and other demographic variables. We predict that the overall group differences will be statistically significant and want to explore whether differences emerge across the different domains of expressive and receptive language.